Fishmanian Sociolinguistics
(1949 to the Present)
OFELIA GARCIA AND HAROLD SCHIFFMAN
with the assistance of Zeena Zakharia
They shall yield fruit even in old age;
vigorous and fresh shall they be.
Psalm 92, as quoted by J.A. Fishman
in relation to Yiddish (1991b: 9)
Introduction
Before an intellectual prophet and leader
It has been humbling to reread the scholarly work of Joshua A. Fishman
spanning the last 55 years. We both met Fishman after he had been estab-
lished as the founding father of the Sociology of Language. We knew then
that his work had been trailblazing, insightful, inspirational. Being in his
presence as a teacher and a colleague was indeed a transforming experi-
ence, for he not only taught us well, but also included us in many scholarly
enterprises. One of us (Garcia) is frequently heard to exclaim, ‘Everything
know, I learned in Fishman 101.’ But it took this careful rereading of his
work, both his early work as well as his recent work, to understand his
prophetic vision, evident as early as 1949 when he published the prizewin-
ning monograph, Bilingualism in a Yiddish School.
As Joshua A. Fishman turns 80 years old,' we are inspired not only by his
gift of intellectual prophesy manifested so early, but also by his extensive
scholarly contribution. His fecund scholarship is attested in this volume by
the bibliography of well over 1000 items that his wife and partner in the
sociolinguistic enterprise, Gella Schweid Fishman, has been able to
assemble.’ We can say about Joshua A. Fishman what the Psalmist in the
epigraph of this article attested, for he continues to yield vigorous and fresh
fruit even in old age. As we write, Fishman continues to publish —a total of
five books, sixteen articles, and two reviews are currently in press. As we
will see, Fishman’s intellectual contributions are important, not only
because they anticipate many future understandings, thus rendering his
prophesy important, but also because they are broad-ranging, making him
a true intellectual giant.4 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Fishman’s work dedicates much attention to leaders who develop and
mobilize positive ethnolinguistic consciousness. For example, Bilingualism
in the Barrio studies the language consciousness and language loyalty of
Puerto Rican intellectuals. And both in his first major research study, ’Lan-
guage Loyalty in the United States’ (1960-1965), as in its update, ‘Language
Resources in the United States’ (1981-1985), the views of ethnic activists
received special attention (see, for example, ‘Ethnic Activists View the
Ethnic Revival and its Language Consequences: An Interview Study of
Three American Ethnolinguistic Minorities’).’ Fishman has also intensively
studied the leadership role that Nathan Birnbaum held at the Tschernovits
Language Conference on Yiddish (see, for example, Fishman, 1987).
This essay gives attention to the role of Joshua A. Fishman as a leader
who has mobilized and energized younger scholars throughout the world to
study language and behavior, especially as it relates to cthnolinguistic
consciousness. Beyond anticipation and the size of his intellectual endeavor,’
Fishman has been, and continues to be, a leader in an intellectual field - one
who has mobilized hundreds, if not thousands, of scholars, educators,
language planners and government bureaucrats to study multilingualism
and to act on its behalf, and especially on behalf of language minorities. At
times Fishman has openly expressed his interest in having a leadership
role. Writing about bilingual education, he states, ‘[I]t is my fond and
fundamental hope to lead bilingual educators in the USA and elsewhere to
consider themselves to be a single community of interest, each learning
from the other and correcting each other’s experimental and attitudinal
limitations’ [emphasis ours] (Fishman, 1976: viii).’ Fishman’s scholarship is
not only ideologically mobilized, but it is energizing for the rest of us who
read him and study him.
Joshua A. Fishman’s clear leadership role in the founding and develop-
ment of the sociology of language is unquestionable and has been well
established by various scholars. Fernando Pefialosa (1981: 4), for example,
calls Fishman ‘the leading figure in the development and characterization
of the sociology of language as an identifiable discipline.’ According to
Glyn Williams (1992: 97), Fishman, ‘more than anyone, has been respon-
sible for the development of the sociology of language.’ Wright (2004: 11)
calls Fishman, ‘a key figure in LPLP (Language Policy Language Planning)
studies.’ In a recent text on sociolinguistics, Florian Coulmas (2005: 158)
describes Fishman as the scholar ‘who more than anyone else laid the
groundwork for the scientific investigation of language shift’ And Spolsky
(2004: 188) has lately said: ‘The study of the efforts of linguistic minorities to
preserve their languages is another field initiated by the creative scholar-
ship of Joshua Fishman. Just as his work pioneered research into language
maintenance and the spread of English, so he too inaugurated the field that
he calls reversing language shift.’ In Dell Hymes’ foreword to Fishman’sFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 5
first text on the sociology of language, Hymes (1972: v) writes: ‘In several
major areas of the field [sociology of language] ~language loyalty, language
development, bilingualism - Professor Fishman has been a leader in
research; at the same time, he has worked to build the field as a whole.’
But which field is it that Fishman has built? It is clear that the work of
Joshua A. Fishman goesbeyond the two disciplines that the term ‘sociology
of language’ evokes. His intellectual enterprise is grounded in language in
society, but also encompasses psychology, political science, anthropology,
history, education, geography, religion and literature. The danger of contin-
uing to refer to the field that Fishman has so richly developed as ‘sociology
of language’ is that it reduces it only to sociological inquiry about language.
We propose here, based on Fishman’s own reclaiming of the term
‘sociolinguistics’ (see ‘Growing pains’ section below), that we speak of
Fishmanian sociolinguistics, as a way to build a space for the rich interdisci-
plinary field that he has developed and in which language in society
remains at the core.
This essay
Though we are unable to fully do justice to Joshua A. Fishman’s intellec-
tual genius, we nonetheless have found permission to do so in Fishman’s
own words, which we quote below. Speaking about the way in which
research should and could be done and the way it is done in the real world,
Fishman asks:
Why is there sucha difference? Because researchers are limited in time,
funds, ideas and ability; nevertheless, they must do the best they can
with what they have. They cannot wait until the best of all possible
worlds comes to pass (for it never will), so they try to conduct their
studies as best they can. (Fishman, 1996a: 7)
We have tried to write this integrative essay ‘as best we can,’ knowing
full well that it cannot represent or fully grasp Joshua A. Fishman’s
profound scholarship.
Because this volume includes Peltz’s integrative essay about Joshua A.
Fishman’s work about Yiddish and in Yiddish, we omit the Yiddish cate-
gory from our analysis. But we acknowledge from the outset the important
role that Yiddish has had in Fishman’s work. Fishman has always acknowl-
edged the importance of what he calls ‘listening to Yiddish with the third
ear’ in his work (1990: 114).
This integrative essay identifies some of the conceptual threads in
Joshua A. Fishman’s work over the last 50 years and attempts to analyze, in
Fishman’s (1971: 607) own words, ‘How the worm has turned)’ The essay is
organized along conceptual threads that appear interwoven, and even
entangled, in Fishman’s own work, often in relationship to each other.
EE6 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Although artificially separated here, we have chosen to disentangle them
for the reader so that we might provide some guideposts as to how
Fishman’s thinking has remained the same, and yet has evolved. Sociology
of Language, the interdisciplinaty enterprise established and developed by
Joshua A. Fishman himself, has evolved into what we might call today,
because of its integrative and yet distinctive character - Fishmanian
Sociolinguistics. Fishmanian Sociolinguistics subsumes the following cate-
gories of study:
* language and behavior;
* multilingualism;
* language maintenance/language shift/reversing language shift;
language spread;
* language attitudes and language and ethnicity /nationalism identity /
religion/ power;
language planning and language policy;
* bilingual education and minority language group education.
In drawing out the threads in this volume, we quote Joshua A. Fishman
extensively. We do so because much of his early work has not been
reprinted, and it remains out of reach for younger scholars. His words here
provide the light to the guideposts that bring his ideas alive.
Language and Behavior and Fishmanian Sociolinguistics
The pioneering efforts
Trained as a social psychologist® Joshua A. Fishman was strongly influ-
enced during his high school years by the work of Max Weinreich and his son
Uriel Weinreich on Yiddish Linguistics. Fishman’s interest in language in
different sociocultural settings was evident when, as a young professor of
social psychology at The City College of New York, he used Joseph Bram’s
Language and Society as a required text. After a brief stay as Director of
Research for the College Entrance Examination Board, Fishman returned to
his native Philadelphia as Associate Professor of Human Relations and
Psychology and Director of Research at the Albert M. Greenfield Center for
Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught the first
course in Sociology of Language during the 1958/59 academic year. In 1960,
after receiving his first major grant for sociolinguistic research for his ‘Lan-
guage Resources Project,’ Fishman returned to New York City as Professor of
Psychology and Sociology at Yeshiva University, where he also served as
Dean of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
From 1966 to 1972 his Doctoral Program in Language and Behavior became
the first interdisciplinary program at Ferkauf, later succeeded by the PhD
Program in Bilingual Educational Developmental Psychology (1981 to 89).”Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) a
Sociolinguistics has been said to have taken shape during the 1964
summer seminar at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus, sponsored
by the Social Science Research Council and the National Science Founda-
tion. This seminar, which took place within the general framework of the
annual summer Linguistic Institute, brought together the major actors of
what would be the sociolinguistic enterprise ~ Gumperz, Haugen, Labov,
Bright, Ervin, Rubin and Grimshaw, among others. Although this marks
the official beginnings of sociolinguistics for some, Fishman makes clear
that by 1964, he had been teaching the sociology of language for five years;
he had submitted his ‘Language Loyalty in the United States’ report to the
United States Office of Education; and he was putting finishing touches on
his first edited volume about the topic, Readings in the Sociology of Language,
which was published four years later in 1968."
Definitions
A 1965 article entitled ‘Who Speaks What Language to Whom and
When? established in a nutshell the question that sociology of language
was to pursue for the next 40 years. In the first major publication to name
the field, Readings in the Sociology of Language (1968), Fishman describes why
the sociology of language is needed:
Since languages normally function ina social matrix and since societies
depend heavily on Janguage as a medium (ifnot as a symbol) of interac-
tion, it is certainly appropriate to expect that their observable manifes-
tations, language behavior and social behavior, will be appreciably
related in many lawful ways. (Fishman, 1968: 6)
Fishman defines the sociology of language as an enterprise that:
[E]xamines the interaction between these two aspects of human
behavior: the use of language and the social organization of behavior.
Briefly put, the sociology of language focuses upon the entire gamut of
topics related to the social organization of language behavior, including,
not only language usage per se, but also language attitudes and overt
behaviors toward language and toward language users. (Fishman,
1972a: 1)
But the sociology of language is concerned with more than just language
behavior. Sociology of language, Fishman (1991b: 2) says, ‘is centrally
concerned not only with societally patterned behavior through language but
with societally patterned behavior toward language, whether positive or
negative’ [emphasis ours]. Itis this belief in social action on behalf of language
that spurs the shaping of the subfields of Language Maintenance, Reversing
Language Shift, and Language Planning, which we treat later in the chapter.
From the beginning, Fishman talks about sociology of language as an8 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
interdisciplinary and future-oriented field. Sociology of language, Fishman
(1968: 6) says, needs work and workers with sensitivity and sympathy’ and
as such, is an inclusive, rather than an exclusive field. The sociology of
language is (Fishman, 1968: 5) ‘one of several recent approaches to the study of
the patterned co-variation of language and society’ [emphasis ours].
Growing pains: Sociolinguistics vs. sociology of language.
‘And never the twain shall meef?’ (1972a: 278)
The term sociolinguistics was broadly used by Joshua A. Fishman
during the early developmental phase of Fishmanian sociolinguistics.
Publishing the very first textbook under the title Sociolinguistics: A Brief
Introduction in 1970, Fishman used the term ‘sociolinguistics’ to include
both behavior toward language (attitudes, movements, planning) and
language concomitants of social processes, large and small (societal forma-
tion, societal interaction, societal change and dislocation). But Fishman
constantly argued for balance and interpenetration between linguistics and
sociology, and he pushed linguistics to truly include sociolinguistics:
If economics answers all questions with supply and demand, and
psychology with it all depends, then the first contribution of socio-
linguistics to linguistics is doubtlessly to make us aware of the fact that
the relations and interpenetrations between language and society are’a
little more complicated than that,’ whatever that may be. (Fishman,
1972a: 311)
This call for the expansion of linguistics to be more inclusive of social
concerns is one that Fishman has continued to make throughout his career:
Certainly, linguistics as a science and linguists as scientists cannot and
should nottry to escape from the values and loyalties, dreams and intu-
itions, visions and sensitivities that move them and that touch them.
(Fishman, 1982, as cited in 1989: 575-6)
Just a few years after the legendary Bloomington seminar of 1964,
Fishman started differentiating what he then called ‘modern sociolinguist-
ics’ from what he defined as the sociology of language. In 1967, at an Inter-
national Seminar held in Moncton, Canada, Fishman proposed a critique of
‘modern sociolinguistics.’ This paper, published as The Description of
Societal Bilingualism’ both in the proceedings of the conference edited by
LG. Kelly in 1967, and also included in the Theoretical Addendum’ to his
1971 Bilingualism in the Barrio, criticizes the focus of sociolinguistics on
micro processes. Fishman (1971: 610) warns that ‘We need studies of soci-
etal bilingualism that do not get so lost in the minutiae of description (in
terms of any current equilibrium model) that they are unable to demon-
strate changes in the bilingual pattern as a result of social change.’Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) LL
By 1972, Fishman was beginning to have doubts about the use of the
term ‘sociolinguistics.’ In Language in Sociocultural Change, Fishman (1972a:
268) argued against the use of the term ‘sociolinguistics’ saying, Itsmacked
to me of linguistic priority, if not of linguistic imperialism.’ He adds,
The term [sociology of language] now stands in my mind for the reborn
field, the revitalized field, whereas ‘sociolinguistics’ has increasingly
come to stand for a ‘kind of linguistics’ and, therefore, for a possibly
important preoccupation, but for one with which I do not and cannot
fully identify. ... [T]he sociology of language must be much more vigor-
ously in touch with social and comparative history, with social geog-
raphy and with political science than with linguistics. (Fishman, 1972a:
270, 272)
As such, his 1972 introductory text was titled, The Sociology of Language: An
Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to Language in Society.
Joshua A. Fishman’s use of the two terms - sociolinguistics and soci-
ology of language — in his work reflects his changing relationships with the
field. From 1968 to 1972, he preferred the term ’sociolinguistics, and this
appeared in the title of his articles ten times, whereas ‘sociology of
language’ was not used in any title during that period. ‘Sociolinguistics’
was used in Fishman’s work from 1968 to 1972 to refer to the language of
developing programs, national development, bilingualism, neighbor-
hoods and censuses. In 1972, however, both ‘sociology of language’ and
‘sociolinguistics’ start to appear in titles, with sociology of language
receiving more attention. That year, Fishman used the term ‘sociology of
language ‘ in six of his titles, and reserved ’sociolinguistics’ for only two.
Throughout the mid-1970s and 1980s, Fishman referred to his contribution
and the field he was shaping as Sociology of Language, and used the term
‘sociology of language’ to refer to his work, although he used the term
‘sociolinguistics’ in a 1973 title in connection to nationalism, and again in
1979 ('The Sociolinguistic “Normalization” of the Jewish People’), and 1982
(Sociolinguistic Foundations of Bilingual Education’).
Despite the growth of the field, by 1990 Fishman signaled that the soci-
ology of language had entered a mid-life crisis. He complained that instead
of ‘progressing firmly on two legs, sociolinguistics was trying to move
ahead primarily on the linguistic front while merely ‘shuffling on the
social.’ His was a call to put ‘socio more into prominence’ (1991a: 128).
When at the end of the 20th century it became clear to Fishman that
sociolinguistics had taken off as a branch of linguistics, leaving sociology
behind, he insisted on placing his work within ‘the sociolinguistics enter-
prise,’ which he envisioned in his edited volume, Handbook of Language and
Ethnic Identity, as an ‘embrace of both sociology of language and socio-
linguistics’ (Fishman, 1999: 152). Throughout the years, Fishman has clam-10 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
ored for inclusion and balance between the linguistic and the social, and he
has not ceased to lose hope that the field will work hard to do both: ‘The
field will only really fulfill its potential when we have the critical mass of
case study knowledge that will allow us to aggregate the particular to get a
clear view of the general’ (Fishman, 2002: x).
With prophetic vision, Fishman had argued in 1972 that the term socio-
linguistics would not disappear because ‘it is too catchy.’ But he opposed the
division of sociology of language into two separate parts — one of socio-
linguistics of language, and the other of sociolinguistics of society (as Fasold,
1984, did years later) - arguing instead for the interpenetration of language in
society and society in language that makes the division impossible. Fishman
claimed that language and societal behavior are ‘equal partners rather than
one or the other of them being “boss” and “giving orders” to the other’
(1972a: 301). ‘Micro- and macro-sociolinguistics are both conceptually and
methodologically complementary, Fishman (1971: 598) reminds us. Arguing
for inclusiveness and expansion in the sociolinguistic enterprise, he says:
Iam neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet but I do know what my
‘druthers’ are and which are so fanciful as to be best kept to myself. I
hope that the links between micro and macro will become ever
stronger, to the point that they will be viewed much like the links
between organic and inorganic chemistry: important and self evident
rather than dubious or controversial... Without bridges, the gap
between micro and macro will grow... The middle ground is repre-
sented by the vision that calls for the relationship between small events
or processes and large scale aggregates or structures, for the natural
and the formalized, for the empirical as well as for theoretical parsi-
mony.’ (Fishman, 1972a: 280)
It is the middle ground that Fishman develops throughout his work, and
that is the core of Fishmanian sociolinguistics.
Growth and hopes
Precisely to develop the ‘middle ground,’ the interpenetration, Joshua A.
Fishman founded both a book series and a journal. Since 1972 he has been
the editor of Walter de Gruyter/Mouton’s Contributions to the Sociology of
Language (for a complete list of the volumes published, see Appendix 1).
Starting with Fishman’s own Advances in the Sociology of Language, the series
has published 80 titles of senior and junior scholars from around the world,
many of which have become classics. Although published in English, the
series was quick to include scholars from developing countries. Early atten-
tion was also paid to the developing world. For example, in the 1970s, the
titles included language cases in Indonesia and Malaysia, Albania and New
Guinea. The most recent books address such diverse language-in-societyFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) a nd
situations as Mexico's indigenous languages, Australia’s many languages
and Englishes, multilingualism in China, and languages in New York City.
Since 1974, Joshua A. Fishman has also been the General Editor of The
International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL), the most important
academic publication in the field of international macro-sociolinguistics.
Reflecting on the characteristics of the journal, Fishman describes them as:
(a) interdisciplinary, reaching farbeyond the field of linguistics (partic
ularly, beyond nasrowly linguistics-focused sociolinguistics), (b) truly
international in content, and (c) macro-level oriented with a special
concern for the status of indigenous and immigrant minority language
communities. (Fishman 1997c: 237)
The growth of the field itselfis reflected in the fact thatin the early years,
only three issues appeared each year, but by 1976 four issues were being
published annually. After 1981, six issues appeared every year (see
Appendix 2, fora list of the I[SL titles). Again, from the beginning, attention
was paid to different areas of the world — issues in the 1970s were dedicated
to languages in Israel, Southeast Asia, Sweden and Finland, Belgium, the
American southwest, and to languages as varied as Romani and Yiddish.
Since the 1990s, I/SL has, in Fishman’s words (1997c: 238), ‘provided
sociolinguistic endeavor with difficult-to-achieve entrée’ into China,
Korea, the Maghreb, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa,
Sub-Saharan Africa, Morocco, Aboriginal Australia and Latin America.
Multilingualism
Multilingualism in Fishmanian sociolinguistic perspective
Joshua A. Fishman’s early interest in Yiddish distinguished him from
other early sociolinguists who were interested in language variation within
the same language. From the very beginning, Fishman had a special interest
in bilingual situations precisely because of the more marked sociolinguistic
variations that this afforded and the possibility of studying this variation
with clearer parameters. Recently Fishman (199) commented on his interest
in multilingualism:
Bilingual or multilingual settings are very commonly studied in order
to gauge sociolinguistic variation (and to relate such variation to the
identity and purpose of speakers on different occasions and in different
contexts), because the variation between languages is easier to monitor
(particularly by sociologists) than is the variation within one and the same
language. [emphasis ours] (Fishman, 1999: 153)
Fishman has always been interested in multilingualism as an intra-group
phenomenon that is widespread and stable, rather than as an inter-group12 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
process. His early work focused on developing and mobilizing conscious-
ness of minority languages and ethnicities in the United States, a country
with a skewed vision of bilingualism as a ‘vanishing phenomenon, as a
temporary dislocation from a presumably more normal state of affairs’
(Fishman, 1971: 584) - see, for example, his books Bilingualism in a Yiddish
School, Language Loyalty in the United States, Yiddish in America, and Bilin-
gualism in the Barrio. But very early on (1968), Fishman broadened his atten-
tion to include inter-group bilingualism also, as his Language Problems of
Developing Nations book demonstrates. His work, however, never aban-
doned the interest in, and focus on, widespread and stable intra-group
bilingualism. In the present era of globalization, when multilingualism is
increasingly an intra-group phenomenon within inter-group interactions,
Fishman‘s conception of multilingualism is more valid than ever before.
Fishman’s work defines ‘multilingualism’ as the interaction between
bilingualism (preferred by psychologists) and diglossia (preferred by soci-
ologists). (For more on this, see the ‘Diglossia’ section below.) As such,
multilingualism in Fishmanian sociolinguistics focuses on the intra-group
widespread and stable use of two or more languages.
Viewing multilingualism differently
The importance of Fishmanian sociolinguistics for the study of multi-
lingualism is precisely that it goes beyond the term ‘bilingual’ as under-
stood in the 1960s by psychologists, linguists and sociologists. Much of
Fishman’s early work is devoted to debunking the ideas proposed by
psychologists on how to study and understand bilingualism, especially the
concepts of balanced bilingualism and dominance that were so prevalent in the
psychological literature concerning bilingualism in the 1960s.
Speaking against the concept of dominance as tested by psychologists
with translation speed tests, Fishman argues that where bilingualism is
socially constructed, and not merely an occupation or hobby, very little
translation occurs. Speaking against translation speed tests, he wrote: ‘such
usage makes it exceedingly cumbersome to deal with those bilinguals
whose dominant (i.e. most used) language is not their most proficient
language...’ (Fishman, 1971: 557). Years later, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1988)
would expand upon this difference between function and competence as
she developed a definition of mother tongue based on the plural criteria of
function, competence, origin and identification.
The debunking of balanced bilingualism and the advancement of Fishman’s
concept of domains of language behavior (see the next section) reminds us
of the notion of ‘plurilingualism’ that has become so important in the Euro-
pean Union today. European plurilingualism today is defined as ‘profi-
ciency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several
cultures’ (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, 2002: 168).Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 13
For Coste (2001: 15), plucilingualism involves practices and values that are
not equivalent or even homologous in different languages, but that are inte-
grated, variable, flexible and changing. This is an expansion of Fishman’s carly
notion that balanced bilingualism is an impossibility.
Linguists have sometimes been the culprits in contributing to the misun-
derstandings surrounding bilingualism. Following Weinreich’s (1953)
Languages in Contact, linguists have looked at the two languages separately
as reflecting two groups, and not one group. In typical Fishman mocking,
style, Fishman says in 1971 (p. 561): ‘The linguist has traditionally seen his
task, in relation to the study of bilingualism, as being similar to that of a
housewife looking for smears of wet paint.’ In ways that remind us of the
hybridity proposed by Bakhtin (1981) and that is so prevalent in the post-
modernist work of scholars like Bhahba (1994), Anzaldwa (1997) and
Gutiérrez et al. (1999), and sociolinguists like Canagarajah (2005), Fishman
blames linguists for having a model of pure monolithic langue that leads
them to find interference only as something harmful. He argues for
studying the bilingual varieties as varieties in their own right. Fishman
(1971: 562) claims: ‘Like other people bilinguals constitute speech commu-
nities characterized by certain general social patterns of rights, obligations
daily round and interactions.’ The ways in which languages are used are
not random, but are governed by norms of bilingual usage understood by
the members of the bilingual community itself,
Fishman (1971: 3) has also pointed out that second language acquisition,
a favorite topic of study for many psycholinguists who study bilingualism,
is not of interest to the sociology of language since ‘bilingualism is acquired
by exposure to, and interaction with, a community that lives in accord with
the norms of usage and that is involved in the normal process of change to
which most communities and most norms are exposed.’ Fishman warns:
Any speech community is characterized by definite norms of language
and behavior, which not only encompass the speech varieties (or
languages) that exist within the speech community for its own internal
communicative needs but also relate them to the types of other-than-
speech behaviors - the interactions, the mutual rights and obligations,
the roles and statuses, the purposes and identifications — in which
various networks within the community are engaged. It follows that
the description and measurement of an individual's bilingualism (as of
an individual's repertoire range with respect to the language varieties
that exist even within monolingual communities of any complexity)
should reflect and disclose the sociolinguistic norms of the speech
networks and the speech community of which he is a part, precisely
because these sociolinguistic norms underlie the individual's bil
gualism. (Fishman, 1971: 3)14 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Referring to the spread of English 33 years later, Brutt-Griffler (2004: 138)
expands upon this concept to propose ‘macroacquisition’ as the ‘acquisi-
tion of a second language by a speech community. It is a process of social
second language acquisition, the embodiment of the process of language
spread and change, or language change through its spread.’
Fishman’ criticism of how bilingualism has been studied also extends to
sociologists who have not conducted their own self-reports but who have
depended on governmental censuses. Fishman questions the traditional
social categories that sociologists use and cries out for lower-order valida-
tion of such categories with different populations, in diverse situations.
Fishman’s early contributions include the development of instruments that
could be used to assess language use and behavior (see, for example, Bilin-
gualism in the Barrio).
Joshua A. Fishman’s ways of looking at multilingualism have given
psychologists, linguists and sociologists new understandings about how
languages function in stable, widespread, intra-group bilingualism. As
Fishman (1971: 605) himself said, ‘Instead of witch-hunting for bilingual
interference, modern sociolinguistics recognizes the linguistic repertoires
of bilingual speech communities as an instance of the repertoires that char-
acterize all functionally diversified speech communities.’
A Fishmanian sociolinguistic model for the study of multilingualism:
Methodological propositions
Joshua A. Fishman’s early work provided a sociolinguistic model for
studying multilingualism and at the same time it advanced theories about
how multilingualism functioned in society. Both the theoretical and the
methodological propositions were founded on the sociocultural con-
textualization of the data, as well as the interrelationships of the parameters.
An important methodological contribution made by Fishman’s early
work was his proposal that researchers have to identify with the speech
community they are studying. This is a position that Fishman has main-
tained throughout his scholarly life. In 1991, he said: ‘The sociology of
language, like all of social science, is inevitably perspectival and a good bit
of any observers’ values and beliefs therefore rub off on his or her observa-
tions’ (1991b: 8). And in his recent article on ‘sociolinguistics’ in the Hand-
book of Language and Ethnicity (1999: 160) he added: ‘Without adequately
taking into consideration the ‘insider’ views, convictions and interpreta-
tions, no full or richly nuanced understanding of the behaviors being
researched is possible.’
In Bilingual Education: An International Perspective (1976), Fishman talks
about his focus not only on empirical data, but also on communicating feel-
ings and values. The preface starts out by saying:Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 15
This is a partisan volume. Not only is it unabashedly in favor of bilin-
gual education, but it is strongly in favor of a certain context for bilin-
gual education: a context that values it as enrichment for one and all...I
have written this book because I want to bring this view, and the data
and reasoning on which itis based, to teachers, teacher-trainees, educa-
tional administrators, a wide variety of other educational specialists,
and educationally concerned laymen. ... | hope I will be pardoned for
feeling deeply and for communicating feelings and values in addition
to information and conclusions. I believe it is my duty as an empirical
researcher to do the former as well as the latter because bilingual
education urgently requires not only attention and understanding but
also sympathy, assistance and dedication. (Fishman, 1976: viii)
Fishman has defended this ‘voice from within,’ even when the political
tide supports research that is contrary to this position and has left him with
little funding for research. In his book titled, In Praise of the Beloved Language
(1996a), he explains:
The chief debit of the ‘voice from within’ is that it is self-interest biased,
but at least it is admittedly so. However, the voices from without are
also necessarily biased ~ in perspective and in expected audience and
reward (and therefore, also in self-interest) — no matter how much they
dress themselves up in the garb of science, objectivity, theory and fash-
ionable philosophy or ideology. Like insider views, outsider views too
are often reductionist and simplistic (and therefore, neither fully
informed nor informing), a charge that outside viewers have long
hurled at insider viewers. (Fishman, 1996a: 119)
But to this insider's view, Fishman, the researcher, has always added an
analytical perspective. In his book Language and Nationalism (1972b), he
speaks about how the three nationalist movements that are at the center of
his life - Yiddish secularism, Hebrew Zionism and the African American
movement - have shaped his interest in language and nationalism. But he
describes how he obtained scholarly distance:
Thave decided to do so [understand them better] by engaging in a once
removed, twice removed, thrice removed mode of analysis, in the hope
that the wider canvas would illumine the narrower, while thenarrower
passion would drive me on to examine one hidden corner after another
in the broader picture. (Fishman, 1972b: xiii)
As a way to study multilingualism, the Fishmanian sociolinguistic
model (1971) relies first on ethnographic observations through which
behavioral or attitudinal clusters associated with different speech varieties16 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
are hypothesized. These clusters are then used for further observations,
interviews, questionnaires, of attitude scales.
Fishman’s methodological contributions to large-scale social investiga-
tions consist of the early development of self-report instruments, censuses,
questionnaires, interview guides and word association tests, that were then
subjected to factor analysis, analyses of variances and multiple regression
analyses. But methodology to him is subservient to the topic at hand. In
what was to be his second large scale sociolinguistic study, Bilingualism in
the Barrio, Fishman (1971: xiii) says: ‘It is one of the hallmarks of scientific
social inquiry that methods are selected asa result of problem specifications
rather than independently of them’ This is an area to which Fishman has
always paid attention. As Research Director of the College Board in the late
1950s, he used correlations, regressions and identification of predictors that
attempt to approximate criteria, but he demanded that selection and
admissions to college must be anchored in a philosophy of education
(Fishman & Passanella, 1960).
‘Throughout his work, Fishman has been concerned with the tension
between group data and individual data, but he has not been moved to give
one up for the other. He sustains:
The need to summarize and group language usage data necessarily
leads to some loss of refinement when proceeding from specific
instances of actual speech in face to face interaction to grouped or cate-
gorized data. However, such summarization or simplification is an
inevitable aspect of the scientific process of discovering meaning in
continuous multivariate data by attending to differential relationships,
central tendencies, relative variabilities and other similar characteriza-
tion. (Fishman, 1972a: 91)
Because the same process may result in differences in varied cases,
Fishman proposes that a comparative method be used to find cross-cultural
and diachronic regularities. As early as 1968, he suggested four scenarios
for comparative work with language groups being the same or different,
and similar or dissimilar with regards to primary sociocultural processes
and contact types. The four resulting scenarios are (Fishman, 1972a: 103):
(1) same language group in two separate interaction contexts: similar;
(2) same language group in two separate interaction contexts: dissimilar;
(3) different language groups in two separate interaction contexts: similar;
(4) different language groups in two separate interaction contexts: dissimilar.
As Fishman’s conceptual universe grew, his methodology continued to
reflect his positive attitude toward the minority speech community or the
problem that he was studying. He also developed ways of continuing to
compare and contrast his thinking on particular sociolinguistic situationsFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) V7
with others, and his own thinking with those of others in what he says may
‘not be the best of all possible worlds.’ This is evident, for example, in the
book that he dedicates to positive ethnolinguistic consciousness, In Praise of
the Beloved Language (1996a). Drawing from examples of the many lang-
uages that make up the compendium of languages in the book, Fishman
(1996a: 4) proceeds to compare the answers that these texts reveal about the
following questions:
* What are the positive views about their vernaculars that have been
expressed by peoples the world over?
* Are there any regularities to these views, across time and across
space?
* Are there more common and less common themes and, if so, which
are which?
* Aresome themes more distinctly European and others less so, or have
some themes now become rather uncommon in Europe while they
have become more common elsewhere?
With considerable detail, Fishman tells us how he went about creating the
categories for the content analysis.
Fishman is mostly interested in social factors, dimensions and parame-
ters, rather than individuals:
The individual, any individual, is merely error variance from the
perspective of social research. Each individual’s behavior is over-
determined in terms of his or her personal dynamics. Social research,
on the other hand, is concerned with factors, dimensions and parame-
ters that are demonstrable over and above the varying tendencies,
dispositions and idiosyncrasies of unique individuals. All of our much
vaunted statistical tests are built upon this very principle: to contrast
between-group variance with within-group variance. Only when the
former is sufficiently greater than the latter do we call our findings ‘sta-
tistically significant’. (Fishman, 1987: 2)
‘Yet Fishman often also pays attention to individuals. He devotes an entire
book to the man who had captured his imagination as the organizer of the
First Yiddish Language Conference in Austro-Hungarian Tshernovits in
1908 — Nathan Birnbaum.
Fishman‘s 2001, Can Threatened Languages be Saved? is a collection of case
studies that puts to the test his theoretical conceptualizations about
Reversing Language Shift (see below). In many contributions, Fishman
tests his own conceptualizations, and in so doing, draws other scholars to
reflect and expand upon his own theories and cases. In the preface to Can
Threatened Languages be Saved? Fishman (2001) writes:18 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Just as any single-authored volume inevitably overestimates the
degree of coherence and confirmation vis-a-vis the author's views, any
multi-authored volume is likely to reveal a reverse imbalance, over-
representing differences and disconfirmations relative to the views of
that same particular author’s approach. (Fishman, 2001: xiii)
One of us (Garcia) always remembers Fishman, the teacher, saying that
‘increasing the variance’ was important in all research. It is a lesson that
Fishman the scholar has always acted upon, demanding that the voices of
‘little people’ and ‘little languages’ also be included.
Recently, Fishman has chided the ethnographic revolution of the post-
modern world for paying little attention to ethnicity and not considering
poetic and romantic imagery and folk analogies. As he puts it,
We have often championed late modernizers and ‘native peoples,’ but
we have even more commonly refocused our intellectualizations from
modernization to post-modernization without letting these peoples
speak their own words or disclose their own hearts and minds.
(Fishman: 1996a: 120)
Fishman has never closed the door to ways of looking deeply in various
ways. About his work, he has said:
I feel strongly that there is more ‘out there’ (even more to the sociology
of language) than science can grasp, and I have a personal need for
poets, artists, mystics and philosophers too for a deeper understanding
of all that puzzles me. (Fishman, 1990: 123)
A Fishmanian sociolinguistic model for the study of mull
Theoretical propositions
ingualism:
Domains
One of the main early concepts proposed by Fishman to study multi-
lingualism was that of domain. The concept of demain, Fishman explains,
was first elaborated among Auslandsdeutsche’ students in pre-World War II
multilingual settings. Domains ‘are defined, regardless of their number, in
terms of institutional contexts and their congruent behavioral co-occur-
rences. They attempt to summate the major clusters of interaction that
occur in clusters of multilingual settings and involving clusters of interloc-
utors’ (Fishman, 1971: 586). Domains allow scholars to make connections
between clusters of interaction and interlocutors and more concrete social
situations.
The interest in defining ‘domains’ grew out of Fishman’s methodological
concern that analytic parameters be in touch with reality and be abstracted
from domain - appropriate persons, places and times. Domains structure the
data of social behavior. Fishman tells us that domain variance is theFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) ag
most parsimonious and fruitful designation of the societally or institu-
tionally clusterable occasions in which one language (variant, dialect,
style, etc.) is habitually employed rather than (or in addition to)
another. (Fishman, 1972a: 80)
Throughout his work, Fishman has reserved a special place for the
family domain, saying that: ‘Multilingualism often begins in the family and
depends upon it for encouragement if not for protection’ (Fishman, 1972a:
82). And much later, when he proposes his model for Reversing Language
Shift (RLS, see below), Fishman (1991b: 113) declares: ‘Without inter-
generational mother tongue transmission, no language maintenance is
possible. That which is not transmitted cannot be maintained.’ This is why
in the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale proposed in his RLS model,
Stage 6 - the stage in which language X (the minority or non-dominant
language) is the normal language of informal, spoken interaction between
and within the family — is crucial to language maintenance and RLS.
Commenting on globalization and the multimodal discourses that have
been made possible by recent technology, Fishman insists on the power of
the family over the power of the Internet, stating that:
Nothing can substitute for face-to-face interaction with real family
imbedded in real community. Ultimately, nothing is as crucial for basic
RLS success as intergenerational mother tongue transmission. Gemein-
schaft (the intimate community whose members are related to one
another via bonds of kinship, affection and communality of interest
and purpose) is the real secret weapon of RLS. (Fishman, 2001: 458)
Diglossia
Another of the major contributions of Joshua A. Fishman to the study of
societal multilingualism has been his extension and expansion of the con-
cept of diglossia as proposed by Ferguson (1959). Ferguson used diglossia to
describe a society that used a H(igh) variety of a language in religion,
education and other domains, and a L(ow) variety in the home and lower
work sphere. Fishman (1964) traces the maintenance and disruption of
diglossia to the national or societal level and extends it to include cases of
societal bilngualism. He warns that ‘socially patterned bilingualism can
exist as a stabilized phenomenon only if there is functional differentiation
between two languages’ (Fishman, 1971: 560) and says:
If the roles were not kept separate (compartmentalized) by the power
of their association with quite separate though complementary values,
domains of activity and everyday situations, one language or variety
would displace the other as role and value distinctions became blurred
or merged. (Fishman, 1972a: 140)20 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Fishman renders the compartmentalization between the H(igh) and
L(ow) language in the form of a diagram:
H
L
with the line between the two indicating functional separation, a boundary.
Fishman explains that without diglossia, stable balanced bilingualism
cannot be obtained, and continues:
From the point of view of sociolinguistics, any society that produces
functionally balanced bilinguals (i.e. bilinguals who use both their
languages equally and equally well in all contexts) must soon cease to
be bilingual because no society needs two languages for one and the
same set of functions. (Fishman, 1972a: 140)
Diglossia provides the impetus for language maintenance or shift, which
we will discuss later. Fishman declares:
Without separate though complementary norms and values to estab-
lish and maintain functional separation of the speech varieties, that
language or variety which is fortunate enough to be associated with the
predominant drift of social forces tends to displace the others.
(Fishman, 1972a: 149)
In 1987, in the book that he dedicates to Nathan Birnbaum, the organizer
of the First Yiddish Conference in Tschernovits in 1908, Fishman reiterates:
A culture that can no longer control its own boundaries is doomed to a
cultural version of the ‘acquired immune deficiency syndrome.’... There
must be a boundary that cannot be overstepped. (Fishman, 1987: 138)
Diglossia, as the stable maintenance of two complementary value systems
and thus two languages, is expressed in two complementary sets of
domains. Fishman distinguishes bilingualism from diglossia as follows:
[Bilingualism is essentially a characterization of individual linguistic
versatility while diglossia is a characterization of the societal allocation
of functions to different languages or varieties. (Fishman, 1972a: 145)
In 1967, Fishman published his now famous and much cited ‘Bilingual-
ism With and Without Diglossia; Diglossia With and Without Bilingual-
ism.’ In this article, he outlined four possible situational cells:
(1) diglossia with bilingualism;
Q) diglossia without bilingualism,
(3) bilingualism without diglossia;
(4) neither diglossia nor bilingualism.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 21
Fishman devotes most attention to the fruitful bilingualism of the first of
these (diglossia with bilingualism) which he illustrates with examples such
as Paraguay where Guarani is used at home and Spanish is used in educa-
tion, religion, government and work. Social groups in this cell are usually
fairly large speech communities that offer a range of compartmentalized
roles, as well as access to those roles to its members (Fishman, 1971).
The second cell (diglossia without bilingualism) is exemplified by polities
that are for the most part ‘economically underdeveloped and unmobilized.’
In these polities, the elites speak one language and the masses another, but
they have never really formed a single speech community — ‘their linguistic
repertoires were discontinuous and their inter-communications were by
means of translators or interpreters’ (Fishman, 1972a: 143).
Bilingualism without diglossia exists in social groups with great social
unrest or rapid social change, such as is the case of immigrants and refu-
gees. Finally, there are very few societies where neither diglossia nor bilin-
gualism occur,
Butas the world has become more interdependent, Fishman’s concept of
diglossia has acquired some fluidity. In 1985 he warns that diglossia
requires control, but not the ‘freezing’ of intercultural boundaries.’
Speaking about the relationship between English and Dutch in the Nether-
lands, Fishman explains:
The result of such boundary maintenance is that English never
becomes a requirement for membership in the Dutch ethnoculture,
although it does become a widespread skill advantageously associated
with such membership. ... It [English] is definitely not intended to be,
nor will it become, an inside language of Dutch society at large.
(Fishman, 1985, as cited in 1989: 227)
Despite the insistence that there must be some functional allocation
between two languages in order for stable intra-group bilingualism to be
maintained, Fishman posits that he espouses cultural pluralism, rather
than cultural separatism. For North American ethnolinguistic minorities,
he supports ‘language maintenance within the framework of mutual inter-
action with American core society’ (Fishman, 1972a: 22). Fishman increas-
ingly acknowledges the interdependency of a globalized world:
Ina world that is continually more and more interactive and interdepen-
dent, modernization can be delayed and ‘locally colored,’ but rarely can
it be interminably delayed or fully controlled. (Fishman, 1996a: 93)
When Fishman conceptualizes the field of Reversing Language Shift
(RLS), he concedes overlapping and interactive functions. But he insists on
the protection and stability of whathe calls the X-ish functions, in the face of
Y-ish functions, with X representing co-territorial threatened languages,22 Language Loyalty. Continuity and Change
and Y denoting unthreatened or less threatened languages. Fishman
(4991b: 85) explains that ‘Bilingualism is protective of X-ishness and interac-
tive with Y-ishness‘ [emphasis ours|.
Fishman (2001) acknowledges that threatened languages (Th below)
usually aspire to discharge the powerful functions of employment, higher
education, mass media, government, etc. That is, threatened languages aim.
to fulfill those functions that diglossia had previously noted as High, as
well as the informal and less powerful functions to which ithad been previ-
ously relegated (previously noted as Low).
But Fishman describes a more realistic and initial goal for threatened
languages in which some of the social functions that had previously been
relegated to the more powerful (or High) language; for example, secondary
education or local employment; would be shared with the non-threatened
language (n-Th below). Fishman represents this diglossic relationship, with
powerful functions above the line, as:
n-Th/Th
Th
That is, although the Th(reatened) language, previously noted as L(ow),
may share some of the functions of the n(on)-Th(reatened) language, previ-
ously noted as H(igh) in the more formal and powerful domains, the
informal domains of intimacy and informality, and especially home, must
be reserved solely for the Th(reatened) language. In other words, there
must not be any fluidity over the horizontal line, and the Th(reatened)
language carefully guards its functions in the home domain.
Fishman warns that RLS‘s goal is not just to elevate the threatened
language so that it is in a position to assume powerful functions, It must
also guard the invasion of the non-threatened powerful language into the less
powerful domains, especially the family, where it can destroy the possibility of
intergenerational transmission by destroying the creation of any mother
tongue speakers within one generation. It is especially X, the threatened
language, that has to be functionally separated. Fishman explains:
When intragroup bilingualism is stabilized so that X-ish has its func-
tions and Y-ish has its functions and these two sets of functions overlap
minimally, then X-ish will have its own space, functions in which itand
it alone is normatively expected. (Fishman, 1991b: 85)
Facing the threats of globalization in the 21st century, Fishman acknowl-
edges the importance of the ‘Big Brother language.’ He concedes that: |AJn
internal societal re-allocation of languages to functions is pursued that will
also be partially acceptive of the culturally stronger Big Brother language’
(Fishman, 2001: 7). Speaking of what he calls late- and later-modernizer
languages, he states that they:Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 23
may find that multilingualism and multiliteracy are actually their best
options for more quickly attaining both symbolic vernacular recogni-
tion on the one hand and the greater material advantages that are asso-
ciated with languages of wider communication on the other. (Fishman,
1999: 161)
Language Maintenance/Language Shift/Reversing
Language Shift
Language maintenance/language shift
Language maintenance and language shift have been important fields of
inquiry in the sociology of language from the very beginning (‘Language
Maintenance and Language Shift as a Field of Inquiry,’ 1964). They were
originally defined thus:
The study of language maintenance and language shift is concerned
with the relationship between change or stability in habitual language
use, on the one hand, and ongoing psychological, social or cultural
processes of change and stability, on the other hand. (as cited in
Fishman, 1971: 603, note 3)
In 1968, Fishman revisits this definition and extends it by saying:
The study of language maintenance and language shift is concerned
with the relationship between change (or stability) in language usage
patterns, on the one hand, and ongoing psychological, social or cultural
processes, on the other hand, in populations that utilize more than one
speech variety for intra-group or for inter-group purposes.’ [emphasis
ours] (Fishman, 1968: 76)
Fishman’s initial interest in intra-group multilingualism was quickly
extended to encompass inter-group processes, as he faced the developing
world and his interest in language planning (see below). It is this extension
that he highlights in his revised definition.
The three main topics of language maintenance and language shift are
identified as (Fishman, 1964, 1968):
(1) habitual language use and the measurement of degree and location of
bilingualism along sociologically relevant dimensions;
(2) psychological, social and cultural processes and their relationship to
stability or change in habitual language use;
(3) behavior toward language, including attitudinal behavior, cognitive
behavior or overt behavior.
Inastyle that is typical of Fishman throughout his career, he articulates his
theoretical conceptualization of language maintenance and language shift24 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
by presenting a series of counter-arguments to his thinking, which he then
critiques (Fishman, 1972a):
(1) language maintenance is a function of intactness of group member-
ship or group loyalty, particularly nationalism;
(2) urban dwellers are more inclined to shift. Rural dwellers who are more
conservative and isolated are less inclined;
(3) themost prestigious language displaces the less prestigious language.
To the first argument, Fishman provides counter-evidence from such
varied ethnolinguistic groups as the Guayquyeries of Venezuela, the
lower caste groups in India, the Raetoromans in Switzerland and the
Auslandsdeutsche in the midst of Polish and Ukrainian majorities. He
concludes:
Language maintenance may depend most on nationalist ideologies in.
populations whose lives have otherwise been greatly dislocated and it
may also depend least on such ideologies in those populations that
have best preserved their total social context against the winds of
change. (Fishman, 1972a: 97)
Fishman then makes the point that language loyalty and language
revival movements are mostly urban phenomena, and gives example of
some low prestige languages that have historically displaced more presti-
gious ones. By so doing, Fishman proposes that the same process may have
different outcomes in different societies and at different times. He says, for
example:
Urbanization may result in language shift away from hitherto tradi-
tional language in some cases, in language shift back to traditional
languages in other cases, while revealing significantly unaltered main-
tenance of the status quo in still others. (Fishman, 1972a: 100)
The significance of this quote is that it contains the germinating seeds for
Fishman’s later work on reversing language shift (RLS) ~see next section.
With a vision that well anticipates Richard Ruiz’s (1984) division of
language ideology as viewing language as a problem, as a resource, or as a
right, Fishman says about language in the United States:
The recommendations advanced here are derived from the point of
view that language maintenance in the United States is desirable, in
that the non-English language resources of American minority groups
have already helped meet our urgent national need for speakers of
various non-English languages, and that these resources can be rein-
forced and developed so as to do so toa very much greater extent in the
future. [emphasis ours] (Fishman, 1972a: 18)Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 25
The seeds for RLS are also in Fishman’s 1966 article titled ‘Planned Rein-
forcement of Language Maintenance in the United States. Suggestions for
the Conservation of a Neglected National Resource.’ This article already
puts Fishman in the position of recommending and planning social action
on behalf of threatened languages. He explains:
[M)ost social scientists feel more comfortable with diagnosis (study
design, instrument construction, data collection, data analysis, data
interpretation) than with therapy (recommendations for action, plan-
ning action, involvement with action-oriented branches of government
or segments of the community)... Although it is frequently admitted
that applied settings can provide powerful stimulation for theoretical
developments, the leap from the role of scholar to that of consultant or
activist is still rarely attempted among behavioral scientists. [emphasis
ours] (Fishman, 1972a: 16, 17)
Fishman, however, dares to make the leap to activist, and also has the
courage to admit his values and biases ~ his social philosophy. He tells us:
“Recommendations leading to language reinforcement imply a willingness
to espouse certain values, and to assist certain groups in an informed
pursuit of “the art of the possible”’ [emphasis ours] (Fishman, 1972a: 19).
Clearly the seeds for RLS were sown in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Reversing language shift (RLS)
While many scholars complain about threatened and endangered
languages in the world today, Fishman has turned his conceptualization of
language maintenance and language shift into a program of social action.
Threatened languages, Fishman (1991b) reminds us, are not replacing
themselves demographically and are unrelated to higher social status. But
something can be done to assist them; resources such as intelligence, funds,
time and effort can be mobilized. Fishman first establishes that RLS is both
necessary and desirable. Posing the question, ‘Can anything be done?’ he
answers in the affirmative, and suggests that one has to decide ‘which func
tions to tackle first ... and which specific steps to take in order to (regain
those functions among specific target populations’ (Fishman, 1991b: 12).
Fishman proposes his Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) where,
the higher the score, the lower the language maintenance prospects of a
group.
The GIDS provides a way by which groups can assess the threatened
state of their languages (X) and can mobilize resources on their behalf:
Stage 8: X spoken by socially isolated old folks;
Stage 7: X spoken by people who are socially integrated and ethnoling-
uistically active, but beyond child-bearing age;26 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Stage 6: X isnormal language of informal spoken interaction between and
within all three generations of family, with Y reserved for greater
formality and technicality than those common of daily family life;
Stage 5: X is also used for literacy in home, school and community, but
such literacy is not reinforced extra-communally;
Stage 4: X is used in lower education that meets requirements of compul-
sory education laws;
Stage 3: _X is used in lower work sphere, outside of the community, and
involving interaction between both speech communities;
Stage 2: Xisused in lower governmental services and mass media, but not
higher levels;
Stage 1: Xisused in higher level educational, occupational, governmental
and media efforts.
The crucial stage beyond which there is no intergenerational mother
tongue transmission, and therefore, no possibility of language mainte-
nance is Stage 6. As we noted before, ‘Face-to-face interaction with real
family imbedded in real community, Fishman (2001: 458) reminds us, ‘is
the real secret weapon of RLS.’ Reacting to the importance that scholars of
multimodal discourse give to the web community (Jewett & Kress, 2003;
Kress, 2003), Fishman (2001: 455) says that ‘community and ‘virtual
community’ are not the same thing at all as far as intergenerational mother
tongue transmission are concerned.’
Groups that fall between stages 5 and 8 are attempting to work out some
kind of diglossia, what Fishman sees as the program minimum of RLS.
Groups that fall between stages 1 and 4 have transcended diglossic status,
and are in search of increased power sharing.
RLS is especially important in the 21st century as a way to balance glob-
alization. Fishman says:
RLSers aim at nothing more than to achieve greater self-regulation over
the processes of sociocultural change which globalisation fosters. They
want to be able to tame globalisation somewhat, to counterbalance it
with more of their own language-and-culture institutions, processes
and outcomes. (Fishman, 2001: 6)
Thus, RLS theoretical contributions make room for both— globalization and
particularism. Fishman (2001) points to the important multilingual and
multi-ethnic interactions that will be necessary in the world of the future:
The languages of the world will either all help one another survive or
they will succumb separately to the global dangers that must assuredly
await us all (English included) in the century ahead, (Fishman, 2001:
481)Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 27
Language Spread
As we have seen, Fishman’s sociology of language was first concerned
with the measurement of habitual language use and the sociocultural
processes leading to or inhibiting language maintenance and language
shift in immigrant settings. But from the beginning, Fishman also turned to
the study of the opposite side of this coin, namely the diffusion process of a
language of wider communication. In 1967, he published the first article
that was to deal with this topic: The Breadth and Depth of English in the
United States.’ The spread of English offered a new perspective for the
study of language maintenance and language shift. On the one hand,
English was widely present in very different societal contexts. On the other
hand, it was present in many educational systems, and was often more read
than spoken. Furthermore, sociocultural processes, and especially the role
of power, were more visible in the study of English language spread than in
the study of language maintenance and shift of immigrant communities.
Fishman says:
Bilingualism is repeatedly skewed in favor of the more powerful, with
the language of greater power being acquired and used much more
frequently than that of lesser power. (Fishman, 1976, as cited in 1989:
241)
About English, Fishman adds:
On the whole, English as an additional language is more learned than
used and more used than liked. The three (learning, using and liking)
are little related to each other. (Fishman, 1976, as cited in 1989: 254)
The fact that English is not particularly liked worldwide is linked to its
power. Fishman asserts:
Small languages and weak polities in the modern world quickly realize
that they require strong partners to protect and complement them.
Large languages and strong polities lack this realization and, therefore,
runa particular risk of parochialism, provincialism, and philistinism —
a risk that is all the more terrifying because miscalculations derived
therefrom can have truly calamitous results. (Fishman et al., 1977: 334)
Itisa lesson for the United States and the powerful English-speaking world
that Fishman delivers again and again.
But from the beginning, Fishman also explains that the spread of English
does not have to result in the loss of local languages. This early position
reminds us of Louis-Jean Calvet’s (1999) ‘gravitational model’ of diglossia,
a model that proposes that today’s spread of global powerful languages
like English can coexist and not threaten local languages. In fact, Fishman,oe Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Cooper and Conrad (1977) prophesy that the use of local languages might
increase as a result of English language spread:
English is clearly the major link-language in the world today and that
alone shows signs of continuing, as such, at least in the short run, while
the use of local languages for official literacy /education-related
purposes is also likely to increase. (Cooper & Conrad, 1977: 56)
In 1980, in an article titled ‘Language Maintenance and Ethnicity,’
Fishman had already identified the two contradictory trends that according
to Maurais and Morris (2004) characterize languages in the globalized
world of the 21st century:
(1) the spread of a single lingua franca (English) ‘for supra-local, econo-
technical, political, diplomatic, educational and touristic purposes’;
(2) the recognition of more languages than ever before ‘for governmental
and governmentally protected functions.’ (as cited in Fishman, 1989:
220)
And yet, Fishman, Cooper and Conrad call for the English-speaking world
to assist the rest of the world in preserving their local vernacular. Fishman
says:
International sociolinguistic balance rests on the spread of English, the
control of English, and the fostering of local/regional /national vernac-
ulars. ... Of these three, the one that is currently most dynamic is that
relating to the vernaculars, many of which are straining for further
recognition. Thus it becomes all the more crucial not only whether
native speakers of English can hold on to their technological superi-
ority but also whether they can really meet the ‘others’ halfway in the
crucial sociopsychological arena of mutual acceptance. [emphasis ours]
(Fishman et al., 1977: 335)
Fishman pursues this topic of the role of English in former British and
American colonies in the book he edits with Andrew Conrad and Alma
Rubal-Lépez, Post-Imperial English: Status Change in Former British and
American Colonies 1940-1990. In a series of case studies authored by
different scholars, Fishman studies the presence of English along seven
dimensions - elementary education, tertiary education, print media, non-
print media, technology /commerce/ industry, governmental services and
operations and indigenous informal usage. Although most cases confirm
the presence of English especially in the econotechnical realms at the supra-
local level, Fishman concludes that there is no evidence of alienation from
the local culture, and certainly no evidence of linguicide. Despite the
threats to endangered languages, which Fishman acknowledges and has
spent his academic life trying to protect and save, it is the need for assis-Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 29
tance to local indigenous vernaculars that Fishman’s work emphasizes. In
other words, he wastes no intellectual energy trying to stop the spread of
English. He acknowledges that:
The socioeconomic factors that are behind the spread of English are
now indigenous in most countries of the world and pat and parcel of
indigenous daily life and social stratification. (Fishman, 1996b: 637)
So it is the role of the vernacular, and its weaker (or at least weakening)
status in indigenous daily life thatis important for Joshua A. Fishman, with
language attitudes and ideologies playing an important role in the shaping
of that role.
Language Attitudes and Language and Ethnicity/
Nationalism/Identity /Religion/Power
Language attitudes
Fishmanian sociolinguistics has always included research aimed at
discovering, ‘the nature, determinants, effects and measurement of atti-
tudes’ (Cooper & Fishman, 1974: 6). That is, affective behaviors always
have had a place in sociology of language studies, alongside overt behav-
iors and cognitive behaviors. But Fishman has also signaled the contradic-
tions between affective and overt behaviors. Jn an article on ‘Language
Policy in the USA,’ Fishman (1989: 408) comments that ‘it is possible for
language attitudes to improve in compensatory fashion as both use and
knowledge decrease.’
In 1996, Fishman dedicated an entire book to language attitudes. His In
Praise of the Beloved Language. A Comparative View of Positive Ethnolinguistic
Consciousness is an attempt to understand language attitudes towards the
vernacular. Fishman makes clear that although nationalist movements
have used these attitudes in mobilizing populations, positive ethno-
linguistic consciousness is not in itself nationalism. Fishman also acknow!-
edges that positive ethnolinguistic consciousness is not the only type of
language consciousness. Language consciousness can also be inter-ethnic,
and even supra-ethnic in the case of shared lingua francas.
The concept of positive ethnolinguistic consciousness ties the understand-
ings of language attitudes with those of language identity and language and
nationalism which we will discuss below. Fishman explains that:
The phenomenology of most ongoing positive ethnolinguistic con-
sciousness recognizes a ... reality in which the ethnic language, the
ethnic identity and the ethnic culture (behaviors, beliefs, artifacts) are
all completely intertwined. It is this very intertwining that constitutes
the ‘heart of the matter.’ (Fishman, 1996a: 61)30 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Despite this intertwining, we address each of these components individu-
ally below.
Language and ethnicity
Ina 1997 essay entitled ‘Language and Ethnicity: The View from Within,’
Joshua Fishman explains that the term ethnicity is derived from the Greek
‘ethnos’ and shares its negative semantic load of ‘unrefined.’ The earliest
Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used the term ‘ethnos’ as the counter-
part to the Hebrew ‘goy’ which meant ‘god-obeying.’ When the terms race,
national origin and culture became inapplicable because they were no
longer useful, the term ethnicity was brought to the fore.
In an early article that Fishman published in 1965 entitled ‘Varieties of
Ethnicity and Varieties of Language Consciousness,’ Fishman says:
Ethnicity refers most basically to a primordial holistic guide to human
behavior ... An all-embracing constellation, limited in its contacts with
the outside world, limited in its consciousness of self, limited in the
internal differentiation or specialization that it recognizes or permits; a
‘given’ that is viewed as no more subject to change than one’s kin and
one’s birthplace; a ‘given’ that operates quite literally with these two
differentiations (kinship and birthplace) uppermost in mind; a ‘given’
in which kinship and birthplace completely regulate friendship,
worship and workmanship. (as cited in Fishman, 1972a: 180)
More than 15 years later, in an article entitled ‘Language Maintenance
and Ethnicity’ Fishman (1989: 180) defines ethnicity as ‘peopleness, i.e.
belonging or pertaining to a phenomenologically complete, separate,
historically deep cultural collectivity, a collectivity polarized on perceived
authenticity.’ Ethnicity, Fishman says much later, is about macro-group
‘belongingness’ or the identification dimensions of culture. He distin-
guishes it from culture by saying that ethnicity is both narrower than
culture and more perspectival than culture, that is, ‘the attribution of
ethnicity is fundamentally subjective, variable and very possibly non-
consensual’ (Fishman, 1997b: 329). But Fishman (1972a: 180) warns that
‘primordial ethnicity is a web that comes apart and becomes segmentized,
bit by bit during periods of sociocultural change.’
Of language, Fishman (1996a: 61) says: Language is an intimately expe-
rienced and highly valued verity, a palpable object of esteem, affection,
reverence and dedication.’ According to Fishman (1989: 673), language ‘is
both part of, indexical of, and symbolic of ethnocultural behavior.’ The
“beloved language,’ he tells us is ‘flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone’
(Fishman, 1996a: 91).
The fact that language is the link to ethnicity is a constant thread
throughout all of Fishman’s work.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 3
[Llanguage is the recorder of paternity, the expresser of patrimony and
the carrier of phenomenology. Any vehicle carrying such precious
freight must come to be viewed as equally precious, as part of the
freight, indeed, as precious in and of itself. The link between language
and ethnicity is thus one of sanctity-by-association. (Fishman, 1989: 32)
In the book that he devotes to positive ethnolinguistic consciousness, In
Praise of the Beloved Language, Fishman (1996a) explains that language is a
symbol system of the human species. Every vernacular can become
symbolic of the speech community, utilized intergenerationally and for
cultural boundary-maintenance. Some languages have a sanctity dimen-
sion, that is, they are expressed as the spirit or the soul of the ethnonational
collectivity. Some are outright Holy languages in which the word of God
and the disciples and prophets was spread — Biblical Hebrew, Koranic
Arabic, Sanskrit, Pali, Classical Mandarin, Javanese, Syriac, Latin, Greek,
Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Old Church Slavonic and several scriptural
languages of the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The majority of the world’s
ethnocuitures, Fishman (1997b) reminds us, are predominantly linked to
traditionally associated religions. Most of the time the language and
ethnicity link is clear, denoting kinship, heritage, hearth and home.
In ways that remind us of the work on linguistic ideologies of anthropol-
ogists today (Irvine & Gal, 2000; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004; Woolard,
1998), Fishman (1991b: 388) explains that language ‘not only implies and
reflects core boundaries but it constantly creates and legitimizes them as
well.’ Fishman (1997b) further points out that the link between language
and ethnicity is variable; that is, sometimes language is a prime indicator of
ethnicity, and at other times it is marginal and optional. Ethnicity itself
“waxes and wanes and changes in response to more powerful and encom-
passing developments’ (Fishman, 1983, as cited in 1989: 686).
Fishman also introduces the concept of language as a resource, and as a
worldwide societal asset. He dedicates much of his work to understanding
Benjamin Lee Whorf’s contributions and especially what he calls ‘Whorf-
ianism of the third kind’ (Fishman, 1982). Whorf, a student of Edward Sapir,
had extended Sapir’s argument that each language represents a worldview,
and posited that particular languages carve up experience according to
their structures and categories. But beyond the linguistic relativity and the
linguistic determinism hypotheses that Whorf posed, and that have been
discarded as untenable, Fishman (1989: 568) values Whorf as a ’neo-
Herderian champion of a multilingual, multicultural world in which “little
peoples” and “little languages” would not only be respected, but valued.’
‘The work of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is cited frequently by
Fishman, who supports Herder’s views that the mother tongue expresses a
nationality’s soul and that:32 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
[Llanguage was also the surest way for individuals to safeguard (or
recover) the authenticity they had inherited from their ancestors as
well as to hand it on to generations yet unborn, and finally, that world-
wide diversity in language and in culture was a good and beautiful
thing in and of itself, whereas imitation led to corruption and stagna-
tion. (Fishman, 1972b: 46)
The link between language and ethnicity can be ‘energized by collective
grievances, Fishman (199%6a: 161) explains. He suggests that the relation-
ship between language and ethnicity is not uni-directional:
Just as ethnic identity is fostered by intergroup grievances, so the
language use corresponding to such identity is fostered. Thus when
use of one’s ethnically associated language is restricted or denigrated,
the users who identify with it are more likely to use it among them-
selves ... than if no such grievance existed. (Fishman, 1996a: 154)
Taking sides, as always, with those who grieve, Fishman warns:
When the late-modernizing or late-autonomy-gaining worm finally
turns, it will necessarily disturb the peace and quiet of those who have
attained recognition earlier and at the latecomers’ expense. But in their
own eyes the latecomers ‘turning’ will not only seem justified but long-
overdue and, indeed, merely following an example well established in
the surrounding world of nations and peoples. ... In the pursuit of
ethnolinguistic dreams, what's sauce for the goose is oft-times consid-
ered sauce for the goslings as well, whether or not this is realistic or
desired by the now older, wiser and fatter geese. (Fishman, 1996a:91)
Fishman (1996a: 93) warns us that ethnolinguistic consciousness of what
he calls ‘late’ or ‘peripheral’ languages will ‘continue to alarm self-satisfied
neighbors’ and ‘disturb the peace of those who are already contextually
comfortable.’ The only way to work out this dilemma is ‘greater reciprocal
bilingualism, with each side evincing a willingness to compromise “its
position maximum ’” (Fishman, 1996a: 93).
Responding to scholars and critics who view the process of globalization
as making ethnicity and language differences unnecessary, Fishman notes:
Some of the very processes of globalization and post-modernism that
were supposed to be most deleterious to purportedly ‘parochial’
identities have actually contributed most to their re-emergence as
‘part-identities.’ The increasing ubiquity of the civil state, of civil
nationalism and, therefore, of a shared supra-ethnic civil nationalism
as part of the identity constellation of all citizens, has resulted in more
rather than less recognition of multiculturalism at the institutional
level and a more widespread implementation of local ethnicity as aFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 33,
counterbalance to civil nationalism at the level of organized part-
identity. (Fishman, 2001: 460)
As globalization has advanced, the link between language and ethnicity
has become more salient in consciousness. And it is precisely globalization
that is responsible for the social action language programs proposed by
RLS, as well as the transformation of many threatened languages and their
speakers. Fishman proposes that:
With increased intensities and frequencies of intergroup contacts and
competition, on the one hand, and with the resulting weakening of
traditional life in the face of cultural influences that are experienced as
‘supra-ethnically’ modem (rather than as specifically ‘other-ethnic’), on
the other hand, a protective and differentiating counteraction is often
cultivated. Under these circumstances, the language and ethnicity link
can not only become the basis of social action but it can also be
transformative for those among whom it is salient. (Fishman, 1997b:
330)
According to Fishman (2002), it is precisely globalization that makes
‘localization’ important:
[T]he coming of globalization in certain aspects of human functioning
makes ‘localization’ even more important in modern part-identity,
equally so for state-nation, nation-state and sub-state populations.
(Fishman, 2001: 455)
Language and nationalism
Joshua A. Fishman devotes an entire book to the topic of Language and
Nationalism (1972b). In the two long essays that make up that book,
Fishman distinguishes between the concepts of ethnic group, nationality
and nation on the one hand, and state, polity or country on the other. Ethnic
group, Fishman says ‘is simpler, smaller, more particularistic, more
localistic’ than nationality. Nationalities are ‘sociocultural units that have
developed beyond primarily local self-concepts, concerns and integrative
‘bonds’ that do not necessarily have their own autonomous territory
(Fishman, 1972b: 3). Nation, however, is ‘any political-territorial unit which
is largely or increasingly under the conttol of a particular nationality’
(Fishman, 1972b: 5). A state, polity or country may not be independent of
external control, and unlike a nation, does not always have a single
predominant nationality.
Fishman also distinguishes between nationalism and nationism. He
defines nationalism as ‘The more inclusive organization and the elaborated
beliefs, values and behaviors which nationalities develop on behalf of their
avowed ethnacultural self-interest...’ (Fishman, 1972b: 4). Nationism, how-34 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
ever, is the ‘cluster of behaviors-beliefs-values pertaining specifically to the
acquisition, maintenance and development of politically independent
territoriality’ (Fishman, 1972b: 4). Fishman (1972b: 194) explains further
that ‘Nationism — as distinguished from nationalism - is primarily
concerned not with ethnic authenticity but with operational efficiency.’
Nationalism often uses language as the link with a glorious past and as a
link with authenticity, either directly by claiming that the mother tongue is
a part of the soul, or indirectly by widespread oral and written imagery.
According to Fishman (1972b), nationalism is ‘transformed primordial
ethnicity’ that leads to functioning on a larger scale. Language Loyalty, the
title of Fishman’s first major study of languages in the United States, is a
component of nationalism.
Fishman has always distinguished between positive ethnolinguistic
consciousness and nationalism. He defends his interest in positive ethno-
linguistic consciousness by declaring, ‘i dtaw a line ... between contributing
to an understanding of positive ethnolinguistic consciousness and fostering
an acceptance of nationalistic horrors’ (Fishman, 1996a: 5). And to the ques-
tion of whether positive ethnolinguistic consciousness, and for that matter,
nationalism, can also be put to negative use, Fishman (1996a: 6) replies: ‘[I]t
certainly can, but so can word processors, education, motherhood, cherry
pies and early spring’
Language and identity
In Language and Nationalism, Fishman (1972b) refers to the continued
need for identity in the latter part of the 20th century:
The need for identity, for community, to make modernity sufferable, is
greater than it was and will become greater yet, and woe to the elites in
universities, governments and industries — who do not recognize this,
or even worse, who consider it to be only a vestigial remnant of nine-
teenth-century thinking. (Fishman, 1972b: 83)
And facing the globalization of the 21st century, Fishman speaks against
the social disorganization of post-modern and supra-ethnic societal func-
tioning:
[Rlationality has not fully satisfied the Pandora’s box of human long-
ings, ice, it has neither created nor corresponded to an inner reality that
responds or corresponds to various other ‘wave lengths’ in human
social motivation as well. (Fishman, 1996a: 58)
Fishman concedes that today ‘ethnic identity is contextually constructed’
and that ‘group membership may be multiple’:
The global and the specific are now more commonly found together, asFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 35
partial (rather than as exclusive) identities, because they each contrib-
ute to different social, emotional and cognitive needs that are co-
present in the same individuals and societies and that are felt to require
and to benefit from different languages in order to give them appro-
priate expression (Fishman, 1999: 450).
This conviction that multiple-group membership is possible is an early
constant for Joshua A. Fishman. For example, in Bilingual Education: An
International Sociological Perspective (1976), he points out that the human
cultural experience is different from plant or animal evolution precisely
because of its capacity for multiple memberships. He says: ‘It [human
cultural experience] not only exhibits but can be aware of and can value
multiple-group membership’ (Fishman, 1976: 8).
But Fishman objects to the concept introduced by Anderson (1983) of
‘imagined communities.’ Communities, according to Fishman, may be
imagined, but they are not imaginary. He agrees with Richard Jenkins’
(1997) position, on which he draws extensively:
Although ethnicity is imagined [in the sense that most members will
never interact with each other face to face and that, therefore, the group
is an abstraction which they must conceive of an identify with], itis not
imaginary ... Somewhere between irresistible emotion and utter cyni-
cism, neither blindly primordial nor completely manipulable, ethnicity
and its allotropes are principles of collective identification and social
organization in terms of culture and history, similarity and difference,
that show little sign of withering away ... It is hard to imagine the social
world in their absence. (Fishman, 1996a: 447)
Because ethnic identity is a sociopsychological variable, minorities are
more conscious than majorities of their own ethnic identity, Fishman
(1996a) tells us. But this doesn’t mean that ethnic identity doesn’t exist for
all humanity.
Language and power
Fishman’s work in defending minority and immigrant languages is
centered on his conviction that languages have to be safeguarded to ensure a
democratic climate of expression. In 1966, in an article entitled ‘Pianned Rein-
forcement of Language Maintenance in the United States,’ Fishman writes:
Our political and cultural foundations are weakened when large popu-
lation groupings do not feel encouraged to express, to safeguard, and
to develop behavior patterns that are traditionally meaningful to them.
Our national creativity and personal purposefulness are rendered
more shallow when constructive channels of self-expression are
blocked and when alienation from ethnic-cultural roots becomes the36 Language Loyaity, Continuity and Change
necessary price of self-respect and social advancement, regardless of
the merits of the cultural components of these roots. (1966, as cited in
1972a: 23).
Using languages in ways that describe the positioning of power differ-
ently, but that attest to unequal relations of power nonetheless, Fishman
(1990: 113) describes his work as ‘centralizing the periphery’ and working
on the ‘cultivation of marginality’ (Fishman, 1990: 115). Reflecting on his
attraction for the periphery, he says:
The periphery magnifies and clarifies. Above all, it refuses to take
matters for granted. It refuses to confuse peripherality with unimpor-
tance, or weakness in numbers or in power, with weakness vis-a-vis
equity, justice, law and morality (Fishman, 1990: 113).
Since the 1990s, some sociolinguists have focused on the relationship
between inequality and power and language and society (Fairclough, 1989;
Pennycook, 1989; Tollefson, 1991, 1995). Pierre Bourdieu (1991) has posited
that linguistic practices are symbolic capital that is distributed unequally in
the linguistic community. Fishman’s work is indeed cognizant and aware
of the economic and social rewards that some languages hold. In fact, one of
his most recent co-edited books (with Martin Piitz) is titled, ‘Along the
Routes to Power’: Explorations of Empowerment through Language. But
Fishman is even more concerned with the non-material values that are so
important in the whole sociolinguistic enterprise. Fishman warns that by
focusing so much on power, a ‘reductionist school of thought’ is ‘missing the
real elephant’ (Fishman, 1991b: 19). In introducing the field of Reversing
Language Shift, Fishman critiques this reductionism:
The entire intellectually fashionable attempt to reduce all ethnocultural
movements to problems of ‘who attains power’ and ‘who gets money’ is
exactly that: reductionist. It reduces human values, emotions, loyalties
and philosophies to little more than hard cash and brute force. These
misguided attempts, regardless of the great names associated with
them and the pseudo-intellectual fashionableness that they occasion-
ally enjoy because of their purported ‘realism,’ inevitably impoverish
rather than enrich our understanding of the complexity of human
nature and of sociocultural reality. They cannot help us grasp the inten-
sity of ideals and idealism of commitments and altruism, that are at the
very heart of much social behavior in general and of RLS behavior in
particular.
And it is not the flea but the elephant that is being overlooked by
such reductionist schools of thought. (Fishman, 1991b: 19)
Fishman cautions that it is not language alone that is standing in opposi-Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 37
tion to the power potential of people who speak X languages (threatened)
in interaction with those who only speak Y (non-threatened)
Xians are invariably bilingual ... and, therefore, in no way cut off from
the economic rewards that are presumably inherent in Yish. ... If only
knowledge of Yish stood between Xish workers and Yish-controlled
rewards, the economic well-being of the former would be much better
off than it usually is. Furthermore, the economic reward dimension is
not the only one that defines Xish individual and social identity ...
Societally weaker languages always need more than mere economic
rationales. It is not labour-market access but economic power which is
disproportionately in Yish hands and that is a problem that will rarely
be overcome on linguistic grounds alone. As a result, even Xian bilin-
gualism usually does not lead to any redistribution of economic powet
and, that being the case, the maintenance of Xish identity and cultural
intactness becomes all the more important for community problem
solving, health, education and cultural creativity. Vulgar materialism
. does not begin to do justice to the nuanced and completely interre-
lated human values, behaviours and identities that are essentially non-
materialist or even anti-materialist in nature. ... \sn’t it the mark of
higher cultures to have other than material values, the latter being
merely the most elementary expression of individual and group
needs? (Fishman, 2001: 453)
Language and religion
Joshua A. Fishman’s interest in language and religion is not new. The
Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by Amer-
ican Ethnic and Religious Groups’ (italics ours) was the subtitle of Language
Loyalty in the United States (1966). Many of the chapters of that book pay
attention to language use and religion. In the Preface, Fishman names
language and religion as two of the important factors spurring his interest
in language loyalty in the United States. He asks:
How many of us, even among professional historians or students of
religion in America, know that a Polish national Catholic Church grew
up on our shores, rather than in Poland proper, because 50 many
Polish-Americans were distressed by the policy of American Catholic
leaders toward language and culture maintenance? Or that a similar
state of affairs almost came into being among Franco-Americans in
New England? How many of us know about the language problems
that convulsed several German and Norwegian Lutheran denomina-
tions for well over half a century, or of the language issues that have38 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
influenced Jewish ethnic, religious and intellectual life in America?
(Fishman, 1966: 10)
In particular, the chapter in Language Loyalty in the United States by John
E. Hofman on ‘Mother Tongue Retentiveness in Ethnic Parishes,’ included
a study of language use in the sermons and instruction in Roman Catholic,
Greek Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ethnic parishes.
But it was only recently that Joshua A. Fishman devoted an entire
volume to the topic of language and religion. Co-edited with Tope
Omoniyi, Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion (2006)
includes contributions from Brazil, USA, Nigeria, Singapore, Australia,
Israel, England, Germany, Georgia, Scotland and South Africa. And the
Sociolinguistics Symposium 16 in Limerick, Ireland will include a panel on
the Sociology of Language and Religion in honor of Joshua A. Fishman’s
80th birthday during the summer of 2006.
Language Planning and Language Policy
The language problems of developing nations were an early scholarly
interest of Joshua A. Fishman, one pursued with his lifelong friend and
colleague, Charles A. Ferguson. In 1968, Fishman, Ferguson and Das Gupta
edited Language Problems of Developing Nations, one of the first texts in the
field that became Language Planning and Policy.
Language policy
Fishman differentiates between language planning and language poli-
cies, a distinction that other scholars tend to ignore, or minimize (see, for
example, Spolsky, 2004). Language planning, Fishman maintains, is the
processes that come after language-policy decisions have been reached
(1972b). Fishman identifies three types of language policies for three corre-
sponding types of societies:
(1) Type A: Amodal. There is consensus in these societies that there is
neither an overarching sociocultural or political past and no indige-
nous Great Tradition (a Great Tradition being a ‘widely accepted and
visibly implemented belief and behavior system of indigenously vali-
dated greatness’ (Fishman1972c: 194)). Usually a Language of Wider
Communication (LWC) is selected as a national or official language.
(2) Type B: Unimodal. There are long-established sociocultural unities with
rather well-established political boundaries. There is a single Great
Tradition available. Usually a single indigenous or indigenized
language is selected as the national language.
(3) Type C: Multimodal. There are conflicting or competing multiplicities of
Great Traditions. The nation must stand for a supra-nationalistic goal,Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to fhe Present) 39
since nationalism is associated with traditional regional (sub-national)
identities. Usually regional official languages are selected, and a LWC
is selected as co-official. Bilingualism is expected.
Language planning
Fishman (1973: 24-25) defines language planning as a ‘set of deliberate
activities systematically designed to organize and develop the language
resources of the community in an ordered schedule of time.’ But like all
planning, language planning also requires a justification for the movement
in the specified direction. Fishman’s model of language planning is based
on Haugen’s original conceptualization of the field (Haugen, 1966) which
included four categories: (1) norm selection, (2) codification, (3) elaboration
and (4) implementation. Fishman likewise speaks of code selection, codifi-
cation and elaboration. He posits, however, that language planning can
foster unity and authenticity via differentiation of two sources: (1) undesir-
able external linguistic influences and (2) internal linguistic alternatives.
Fishman studies language planning from two vantage points: (1) status
planning and (2) corpus planning. He cautions that status planning is
usually embroiled in conflictual inter-ethnic struggles, since it is the area of
material statuses and rewards (Fishman, 1997b). Corpus planning, on the
other hand, consists of tending to the ‘outer vestments (nomenciature, stan-
dardized spellings, grammars and stylistic conventions) that modern.
pursuits and modern institutions require’ (Fishman, 1997b: 337). Although
Fishman posits that language policy precedes language planning, his
study of First Congresses (1993) made him aware of an embryonic stage of
language planning in which no authoritative policy decisions have yetbeen
teached.
‘ishman (1994) has responded to the neo-Marxist and post-structuralist
critiques toward language planning (Luke & Baldauf, 1990; Tollefson,
1991), while recognizing the difficulties with the field: (1) that it is
conducted by elites, (2) that it reproduces sociocultural and econotechnical
inequalities, (3) that it inhibits or counteracts multiculturalism and (4) that
it espouses world-wide Westernization and modernization. According to
Fishman:
Authorities will continue to be motivated by self-interest. New struc-
tural inequalities will inevitably arise to replace the old ones. More
powerful segments of society will be less inclined to want to change
themselves than to change others. Westernisation and modernisation
will continue to foster both problems and satisfactions for the bulk of
humanity. Ultimately language planning will be utilised by both those
who favor and those who oppose whatever the socio-political climate
may be. (Fishman, 1994: 98)40 Language Loyaity, Continuity and Change
Fishman’s latest work is focused on the status agenda in corpus planning
and the interpenetration of both - the pair of Siamese-twins, he calls them.
He explains:
It is a gossamer web that they weave. It cannot be woven out of praises
alone, for were there nothing but praises to be uttered for the beloved
language as it is, then corpus planning itself would be unnecessary if
not impossible. On the other hand, it cannot be fostered by empha-
sizing the current debits of the beloved language, for were that to be
done it would play into the hands of its detractors and opponents.
(Fishman, 1996a: 114)
Although Fishman understands that people in general do not like the
prospects of social intervention in languages and their uses, he argues that
it is inevitable if all languages are to be seated ‘at the table’:
Ifone seeks a place at the table of the respected and the self-respecting,
if one seeks a share in the good things of the world, not least among
them being respect, comfort and security, then one’s beloved language
too must be elevated. The language symbolizes the people, it repre-
sents them, it speaks volumes for them, and if they are to be heard and
heard-out, then it must speak from a position of honor and security as
well. However, the circular interconnectedness between language and
people is also fully matched by a circular interconnectedness between
status planning and corpus planning. One cannot make a silk purse out
ofasow’sear and an effective elevation in status can rarely be attained
or maintained without considerable change in the nature of the
language itself. And so it inevitably comes about that the beloved
language, whose loveliness was initially given in nature, and, indeed,
is seen as part of its own ineffable nature, comes to require intervention
so that it can more rapidly become visibly and audibly suitable for the
new and higher functions that are pursued on its behalf. (Fishman,
1996a: 92)
Developing this concept further, Fishman (2000) has suggested that all
language planning, whether corpus planning or status planning, is related
to a super factor of independence / interdependence. Fishman proposes
four different categories that are organized around the different poles of
independence and interdependence:
(1) Ausbau/Einbau. Ausbau planning” is a building away process moti-
vated by a desire to distance a language from its structurally similar
big brother. This is the case of Urdu/ Hindi, of Macedonian/Bulgarian,
or of Landsmal/Ryksmal. Linguistic distancing is an indicator of a
wish for independence and distancing - social, cultural and political.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 4l
Einbau planning, on the other hand, refers to drawing two languages
closer together, emphasizing similarities and interdependence. This is
the case of the current Romanian treatment of Moldavian, or of former
Soviet treatment of Ukrainian and Belarusian
(2) Uniqueness/Internationalization. Planning for Uniqueness and Authen-
ticity requires ensuring that language is independent of others. This is
why, for example, St Stephen of Perm developed a writing system for
Komi based ona similarity to the traditional Komi decorative designs.
Planning for internationalization, on the other hand, wishes for interde-
pendence with the modern scientific and technological ways of
naming. This was the case, for example, of Atatiirk who Westernized
Turkish based on French influences that he thought would make
Turkish capable of modern use.
(3) Purification/Regionalization. Planning for Purification is related to
Ausbau and Uniqueness, but it differs from Ausbau in that the fears
are not directed against the ‘Big Brother’ alone. And it differs from
‘Uniqueness in that a single source of contamination is rejected. Purifi-
cation has beena factor in planning for the independence of the revival
of Hebrew, for example, from the contamination of Yiddish. Planning
for Regionalization, on the other hand, has to do with Sprachbund, an
entire cluster of sister languages that are acceptable sources for
borrowings and influences. For example, Turkic languages are the
resources for Central Asian languages; Malay and Indonesian are
resources for each other; and Nordic languages are resources for one
another, with the exclusion of Danish.
(4) Classicization/ Vernacularization. There are many examples of planning
for classicization: Hindi (from Sanskrit), Tamil (from Old Tamil),
Arabic (from Quranic Arabic). Planning for vernacular use, however,
favors popular usage.
In the end, Fishman (2000: 114) tells us, ‘all corpus planning that is
oriented toward modernization and interaction with [the] community of
modern peoples and nations must also settle for [an] inevitable degree of
interdependence as well.’ Language planning, he explains,
when engaged in under auspices of modernization and with modern-
ization as the goal, generally results in making languages even more
capable of translating American life, even when suffusing the transla-
tions with the aura and the pretense of greater or lesser degrees of
indigenization.’ (Fishman, 2000: 50)42 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Bilingual Education and Minority-Language Group Education
Scholarly interest
Bilingual education was Joshua A. Fishman’s earliest area of study
(Bilingualism in a Yiddish School: Some Correlates and Non-correlates,’
1949). Almost 60 years ago, this study already contained the motivations
for the development of the sociology of language. Garcia (1991) has pointed
out that the ‘Bilinguality Relationship Scale’ used in the study contains
questions that foreshadow Fishman’s now famous ‘Who Speaks What
Language to Whom and When.’ And the independent variables of the
study — play preferences, school adjustment, family adjustment, number of
friends, self-identity with nationality and attitude toward Yiddish — are the
same variables that Fishman later explores in studies of language, ethnicity
and schooling. Fishman’s familiarity with the Yiddish Workmen’s Circle
Schools in Philadelphia prepared him for his work on bilingual education.
Fishman’s first major research project and publication, Language Loyalty
in the United States (1966), dedicates a chapter to ‘the ethnic group school
and mother tongue maintenance in the United States,’ a topic that he has
pursued throughout his lifetime. Once the Bilingual Education Act was
passed in 1968, many publications on bilingual education followed.
Fishman devoted three more books to the topic of bilingual education:
Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective (1976); Bilingual
Education: Current Perspectives. Social Science (1977); and Bilingual Education
for Hispanic Students in the United States (1982). And in 1979 he released his
final report for the National Institute of Education on ‘The Ethnic Mother
Tongue School in America.’ Between 1970 and 1985, Joshua A. Fishman
published 15 articles on the topic; these were reprinted again and again.”
Fishman devotes a great deal of effort to documenting the existence of
Ethnic Mother Tongue Schools (EMT schools) because:
These schools must be included in our educational, social and intellectual
bookkeeping, more for the sake of our national well-being than for their
sake, since even the United States cannot afford to overlook some 6000
schools attended by as many as 600,000 children. (Fishman, 1980: 236)
Furthermore, he explains: ‘Rather than reflections of foreignness, ethnic
community mother tongue schools are actually reflections of dealing with
both indigenousness and mainstream exposure’ (Fishman, 1980: 243).
It is important to point out that Fishman was never ‘led astray’ by the
frenzy that surrounded The Bilingual Education Act, that is, Title VII of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. His work, both that of Language
Loyalty in the United States, and also the research that later became Bilin-
gualism in the Barrio, was frequently quoted in the deliberations that led to
the passage of the Bilingual Education Act in 1968. And some of his termi-Fishmanian So’
iolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 43
nology, especially the word ‘transitional’ to substitute for ‘compensatory,’
has been adopted by governmental, scholarly and popular circles. His
support for the education of language minorities, especially Spanish-
speaking minorities, has been unquestionable. The 1982 volume edited
with Gary Keller and dedicated to Hispanic students is precisely a reflec-
tion of this support. In addition, his concern about public bilingual educa-
tion for poor Latino and Native American students has been approached
through the prism of the importance of ethnic-mother-tongue schools,
organized and supported by the ethnolinguistic group itself.
Education
Joshua A. Fishman has defined education broadly. As Dean at Yeshiva
University, he proposed the merging of Education, Liberal Arts and
Behavioral and Social Sciences saying that ‘[Education is first and foremost
an intellectual endeavor striving to increase knowledge about man and
the process whereby he learns, grows, changes and influences others’
(Congressional Record A, 3594, July 11, 1966)
Fishman has also claimed that schools cannot ‘goat it alone.’ Inan article
entitled ‘Minority Mother Tongues in Education’ he says:
[Elducation is a socializing institution and must never be examined
without concentrating on the social processes that it serves and the
social pressures to which it responds. (as cited in Fishman, 1989: 467)
Fishman (1989: 467) goes on to say that ‘[S]chools alone cannot guarantee
the continuity of cultures, if for no other reason than that schools are gener-
ally no more than intervening (serving) rather than independent (causal)
variables with respect to such continuity.’
That schools are just intervening variables is an important idea in
Fishman’s early defense of public bilingual education. He cautions that:
[BJecause there are so many other pervasive reasons why such children
[poor minority children] achieve poorly, the goals of majority-oriented
and -dominated schools (and societies), removing this extra burden
above ~ and leaving all else as it was — does not usually do the trick,
particularly when the teachers, curricula and materials for bilingual
education are as nonoptimal as they currently usually are. (Fishman,
1976: 28)
For bilingual education to succeed, general support is needed. Fishman
(1976: 111) contends that: ‘not only is community consensus needed if bilin-
gual education is to succeed, but ... help of the unmarked language commu-
nity is needed every bit as much as, if not more than, that of the marked
language community.’ His interest in bilingual education was concerned
with increasing knowledge about speech communities — both language44 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
minority and language majority ones — as they interacted with each other
and were transformed.
Early typologies and warnings
In 1970, Joshua A. Fishman and John Lovas published the now well-
known ‘Bilingual Education in Sociolinguistic Perspective’.” Two years
after the implementation of the United States’ Bilingual Education Act,
Fishman and Lovas identified the features still lacking: (1) lack of funds, (2)
lack of personnel, (3) lack of evaluated programs. This contribution provided
insights into societal bilingualism that educators, psychologists and linguists
involved with bilingual education programs had been missing.
Fishman pointed to three different language situations in communities
that planners of bilingual education should be aware of:
(1) acommunity in the process of language shift;
(2) acommunity determined to maintain its own language in many or all
social domains;
(3) acommunity with one or more nonstandard varieties in one or more
languages and their differential use from one societal domain to
another and from one speech network to another.
And he warmed that bilingual education (BE) programs must ascertain the
sociolinguistic situation of the community before one program or the other
is chosen.
Fishman (1972d: 89) proposes a typology of bilingual education based
on different kinds of communities and school objectives:
(1) Type I. Transitional BE, where the mother tongue is used in early grades
until the dominant language is developed. This program corresponds
to an objective of language shift.
(2) Type Il. Moxoliterate BE, where both languages are used for aural-oral
skills, but literacy skills in the mother tongue are not pursued.
(3) Type Ill. Biliterate BE—Partial Bilingualism, where fluency and literacy in
both languages are pursued, but literacy in the mother tongue is
restricted to certain subject matter, usually that which relates to the
ethnic group. Ethnic-mother-tongue day schools are generally of this
type.
(4) Type IV. Biliterate BE-Full Bilingualism, where both languages are used
as media of instruction for all subjects, and students develop all skills
in both languages in all domains.
Fishman warns that although full biliterate-bilingualism programs seem
to be desirable, there are dangers in pursuing them, saying:
A fully-balanced bilingual speech community seems to be a theoreticalFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 45
impossibility because balanced competence implies languages that are
functionally equivalent and no society can be motivated to maintain
two languages if they are really functionally redundant. Thus, this type
of program does not seem to have a clearly articulated goal with
respect to societal reality. (Fishman, 1976: 89)
Continuing to develop the link between types of education and types of
speech communities, Fishman published ‘Bilingual and Bidialectal Educa-
tion’ (1972) where he attempted to apply to bilingual education the model
he had developed for language planning in ‘National Languages and
Languages of Wider Communication in the Developing Nations’ (1969).
Fishman (1972a: 332-337) proposes three different types of language eiuca-
tion policies, advancing by a quarter-century the field that was later known
by that name:
(1) Type A policies: None of the mother tongue varieties are considered
school-worthy because they’re not tied to any great tradition and are
not believed to have integrative potential. The educational authorities
select for educational use a language which is not a mother tongue,
and often is the standard variety of the language of wider communica-
tion (LWC). Examples of these policies are countries in West Africa
such as Gambia and Sierra Leone.
(2) Type B policies: There is an internally integrative great tradition, but
additional traditions must also be recognized. Usually the standard is
reserved for written language and education is bidialectal. Teachers
and students are of the same speech community. Examples of these
policies are most parts of Switzerland and Germany.
(3) Type C policies: Several competing great traditions exist usually region-
ally. Each locality must teach a link language for communication with
other localities. Students will be educated in their own mother tongue,
and alsoin another tongue. Examples: Belgium, Switzerland or India.
Fishman not only proposes alternatives, but discusses their conse-
quences and points out to infelicities in each of the types of policies. In Type
A policies where the LWC is chosen for education, Fishman indicates that
teachers must nevertheless begin by using the mother tongue of the pupils.
Another consideration for this type of language education policy is
whether to adopt the curriculum and standards set where the LWC is
spoken or whether to develop these indigenously. An even greater problem
occurs when polities have a high rate of illiteracy. It is well known that this
type of policy, where the LWC used in education is not the mother tongue,
presents great difficulties for adult literacy.
But the biggest concern with this type of language education policy is
precisely that it is artificial and may not result in educational success.46 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Fishman points, however, to the reality that many indigenous groups insist
on this type of education, regardless of limitations. That is, it is not simple
imposition of themost powerful that results in such language education poli-
cies. Representing the powerful standard or dialect with a capital D (before
Gee (1996) had suggested the D for his use of Discourse), Fishman writes
The insistence on D and D only (for all students for all subjects) is
potentially nonfunctional even though it may bea widely shared view
rather than one imposed from without in many ways. It artificializes
education to the extent that it identifies it with a variety thatis not func-
tional in the life of the community. (Fishman, 1972: 334)
‘Type B policies, in which the D is used for some subjects and a more
indigenous variety is used for other subjects, also presents additional ques-
tions. For example, polities would have to decide what should be taught, in
which language, and for how long,
International perspectives and advantages
In 1976, Fishman published Bilingual Education: An International Sociolog-
ical Perspective, a book that he had been working on since 1972 when he was
Visiting Professor of Sociology of Language at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. The book includes the results of an empirical study that focuses
on three specific criteria across 100 of the 1000 secondary bilingual educa-
tion programs:
(1) Whataretheaveraged grades awarded across all subjects and all years
of study?
(2) How do bilingual secondary schools compare to monolingual
secondary schools in their immediate areas serving comparable popu-
lations insofar as averaged grades are concerned?
(3) How pleased are students with respect to their bilingual secondary
schooling in terms of its impact on their academic, personal and social
development? (Fishman, 1976: 94-95)
The resulting published work was a significant contribution to the field
of bilingual education. It communicated Fishman’s (1976: ix) support for
the field (‘bilingual education is "good for everybody”). Part 1 of the book
proposes and then defends the four principles in which Fishman bases his
support of bilingual education:
(1) bilingual education is good for the majority group;
(2) bilingual education is good for the minority group;
(3) bilingual education is good for education;
(4) bilingual education is good for language teachers.
The arguments for bilingual education that Fishman presents in thisFishmanian Socic
linguistics (1949 to the Present) 47
book are eerily relevant today. For example, Fishman supports bilingual
education because it responds to multiple-group membership, a concept
prevalent in post-modern scholarship. He writes: ‘Only bilingual and
bicultural education provides for multiple memberships and for multiple
loyalties in an integrative fashion... ’ (1976: 9). He also supports the social
equality aspects of bilingual education, saying:
If bilingual education does nothing else, it at least equalizes the chil-
dren of marked- and unmarked-language backgrounds by providing
each of them some instruction via their own mother tongue as well as
some via the ‘other’ group’s mother tongue. (Fishman, 1976: 119)
Fishman points out that yet another advantage of bilingual education is
the economic possibilities that it affords bilinguals. He notes that others
might see this as selfish, and clarifies:
Economic self-interest is presumably acceptable if pursued by the oil
lobby, by the teachers’ unions, and by our most reputable universities,
but is considered meanly divisive if pursued by Hispanics, Native
Americans, or other ethnics. (Fishman, 1989: 408)
Fishman’s intention in writing a book on international bilingual educa-
tion is clearly to provide a cross-cultural dimension that would guide and
lead bilingual educators everywhere, allowing them to consider them-
selves a ‘single community of interest, each learning from the other and
correcting each other‘s experimental and attitudinal limitations’ (Fishman,
1976: viii). He prophesied that bilingual education would continue to be
important and become even more important as English spreads, saying:
We seem to be living in a period of world history in which a larger
number of local languages are being given educational recognition at
the very same time that a relatively few world languages (primarily
English) are also gaining wider currency. Both of these trends, dispa-
rate though they may appear to be on the surface, are contributing to
the overall growth of bilingual education. (Fishman, 1977: 31)
A significant contribution of this book is the chapter that argues that
bilingual education is good for language teachers, a foreshadowing of what
Krashen (1996, for example) advanced decades later as the advantage of
bilingual education over TESOL. Fishman makes two important theoretical
contributions in this regard: (1) that the increased contextualization provided
by bilingual education is important for language learning, and (2) that
second language teaching must target specific communicative functions.
Fishman (1976: 36) values bilingual education for ‘its maximization of
language learning for the communication of messages that are highly
significant for senders and receivers alike.’ This position is related to48 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Krashen’s (1979) comprehensible input hypothesis and his idea of i+7 for
second language learning - representing input (i) plus a bit more (+1) than
the student already knows). But Fishman’s ideas are also related to
Vygotzky’s concept of scaffolding, and to what second language educators
today have translated as more contextualization, relevancy and immediacy
(Gibbons, 2002; Walqui, 2002).
Fishman (1976: 38-39) also points out that second language learners
need languages for restricted ranges of functions, and that teachers ‘ought
to specify the contexts in which the student plans to use the target
language.’ Furthermore:
No one knows how to speak a language appropriately in all contexts in
which it is used, because no one has access to all the societal roles in
which the language is used and which constrain language usage.
(Fishman, 1976: 39)
In the 21st century, as we saw above, the European Union has advanced
the concept of plurilingualism for all its citizens. The CLIL/EMILE peda-
gogy that is being developed (Baetens Beardsmore, 1999) clearly specifies
language functions and targets, with second languages being used to teach
only certain subjects and for certain functions.
Critic of the Bilingual Education Act
Although a supporier of bilingual education, Fishman makes his antip-
athy towards the Bilingual Education Act clear, and he denounces its
monolingual goals:
The Act was primarily an act for the Anglification of non-English
speakers and not an act for Bilingualism. ‘Bilingualism’ has become a
newspeak euphemism for non-English mother tongue. ‘Bilinguals’ are
thus non-English mother tongue speakers; bilingual teachers are those
who teach them/ bilingual programs are those that Anglify them...
The act is basically not an act for bilingualism, but rather, an act against
bilingualism. [emphasis ours] (Fishman, 1989: 405)
The bilingual education programs supported by Title VII (presently Title
Il of No Child Left Behind) rarely have interest either in the minority
language or in the minority child. Instead in many schools the only interest
is the rapid acquisition of English.
About the US government's lack of interest in developing and teaching
the minority languages, Fishman (1989: 469) proposes, ‘There is no or little
constructive interest among the central authorities in how well they are
taught in their own language, since these learnings are not considered by
national authorities to be really in the national interest.’ And about the lack
of interest in the minority child, he explains:Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 49
[I]f there are still doubts as to the psycho-educational advantage of
initial instruction via the minority child’s mother tongue, it is only
because of the overwhelming concern for that acquisition of the
societally dominant language rather than for his or her more pervasive
intellectual, emotional and self-definitional development or for the
future of his or her minority community. (Fishman, 1989: 468)
Fishman is interested in the protection and development of the minority
language precisely because of its advantages for the minority child and the
minority community. He reveals that many of the public bilingual educa-
tion programs do not have the child’s best interest at heart.
Transitional vs. enrichment bilingual education
From the very beginning, Joshua A. Fishman stood against the trans-
ethnifying aspects of transitional bilingual education. Much of the volume
Bilingual Education: International Perspectives is devoted to speaking against
transitional /compensatory models, as well as in favor of enrichment bilin-
gual education. in Fishman’s ironic style, he conceptualizes transitional
bilingual education as a disease and explains how it is that using the mother
tongue can lead to language shift:
If a non-English mother tongue is conceptualized as a disease of the
poor, then in true vaccine style this disease is to be attacked by the
disease bacillus itself. A little bit of deadened mother tongue, intro-
duced in slow stages in the classroom environment, will ultimately
enable the patient to throw off the mother tongue entirely and to
embrace all-American vim, vigor and stability. (Fishman, 1976: 34)
Fishman cautions that transitional bilingual education is simply bad for
the minority language:
As for the ‘common garden variety’ of American transitional bilingual
education, there is a growing suspicion that for the marked group
child, it is doing more harm to native language mastery and to native
community participation than whatever good it may be doing in terms
of academic achievement, English mastery or participation in un-
marked role. (Fishman, 1972a: 46)
He refuses to give scholarly attention to transitional bilingual education
because it is only a small part of the education of a child. Years later, he
explains that mother tongue education,
should notbe trivialized by evaluating merely the degree to which initial
instruction via the disadvantaged language maximizes acquisition and
mastery of the advantaged one. To do so is not only tantamount to50 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
adding insult to injury; it is also to lose sight of the true relationship
between language, society and culture. (Fishman, 1989: 479)
Fishman (1972a: 48) also warns that ‘[tJransitional-compensatory bilin-
gual education is scheduled to “self-destruct” in the not too distant future.”
He explains this self-destruction in the following way:
If it does not succeed in improving the English mastery of those
assigned to it, it would necessarily be called to task, and discontinued
since such improvement is its major avowed purpose. However,
should it succeed in this restricted task, then it would be discontinued
purportedly as being no longer necessary. The result may well be a
species of the ‘double bind’ so well known in the etiology of schizo-
phrenia, with compensatory bilingual education characterized by not
having enough leverage or opportunity with respect to the dominant
(Anglo) society in order to successfully negotiate progress toward
economic-social-political status roles for its clientele, on the one hand,
and then, in addition, not having enough of an economic-social-polit-
ical base within its own ethnic environments to foster real respect,
mastery and attachment to the ethnic mother tongues either. [emphasis
ours] (Fishman, 1977: 23)
Fishman refers to this ‘double bind’ (‘damned if you do; damned if you
don’t’) of the Bilingual Education Act throughout all his writings on the
subject (see, for example, Fishman, 1978). And in the 21st century, the
success of the anti-bilingual education referenda in California, Arizona and
Massachusetts seem to be a reflection of Fishman’s early vision regarding
the difficulties that public bilingual education was to face in the future.
At the same time that Fishman (1976: viii) attacks transitional bilingual
education, he advances his passion for ‘enrichment for one and all, rather than
merely as compensation for down-and-out minorities or as a group-main-
tenance opportunity for reawakening ones’ [emphasis ours]. In fact, he
states (1976; 9): ‘It is the poor little rich kids who most desperately need
bilingual and bicultural education.’ Advancing again by decades the
coming of ‘English Plus,’ Fishman says: ‘In the long run it means just as
much mastery of English plus more vibrant cultural pluralism, both for the
minorities and for the majority as well’ (Fishman, 1976: 121).
Two-way dual language bilingual education
Joshua A. Fishman establishes that it is important for ethnolinguistic
minorities to first become heard and socially equal before they can stress
interdependence with majorities. Speaking of the case of the United States,
Fishman proposes:
America’s non-English speaking minorities may very well have toFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) _ 51
place greater stress upon good bilingual education and other, even
more effective forms of social protest and social equalization before
they can afford the equanimity of stressing good intergroup relations
as a goal to aim at from a position of strength. (Fishman, 1977: 42)
Nevertheless, Fishman has a vision that these goals of social equalization
ible in a better future. He says:
n of American magnanimity involved, but more than
that, a vision of American possibilities, opportunities, appreciations,
sensitivities, that we all should savour. ‘Brotherhood’ does not mean
uniformity. A shared diversity can be the true meaning of the Amer-
ican promise: ‘to crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining
sea.’ (Fishman, 1989: 415)
But he again warns that school cannot go at it alone to impart this vision.
Fishman advances the vision of joint schooling for students with
different linguistic profiles — what we today call two-way dual language
education - but he warns that this goal cannot be restricted to the schools
alone:
Ifboth types of children can ultimately wind up in the same classroom,
one motivated by transitional and maintenance considerations and the
other by enrichment considerations, an optimal modus vivendi will have
been attained... However, if enrichment language policy is limited or
restricted to the schools alone, it will fail as surely as either transitional
or maintenance policy when similarly restricted. What is needed is an
enrichment policy that views the multilingualization of American
urban life as a contribution to the very quality of life itself. (Fishman,
1989: 414)
Indeed, Fishman foresees the problems that two-way dual language bilin-
gual programs are encountering in the United States today, as their enrich-
ment philosophy does not correspond to the view of bilingualism that most
US citizens hold (Garefa, 2006).
With regard to the participation of English-speaking students in such
programs, Fishman (1989: 405) warns that the ‘[rJealities of urban demog-
raphy being what they are, such magnanimity does not go much beyond
the co-presence of Blacks and Hispanics.’ Indeed today it is mostly Latinos
with different linguistic profiles who make up the student-body of two-
way dual language programs. And it is students of color, African-Ameri-
cans and others of African descent, but also Indians, Pakistanis and many
others, who make up the English-speaking part of most two-way dual
language programs.52 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Conclusion
Summing up the scholarly achievements of a seminal thinker like Joshua
A. Fishman is a daunting task. We who have followed in his footsteps often
find that it is like following a giant - we have to make a huge effort to under-
stand what he has done, even as we recommend to our students that they
read carefully, and alsoread between the lines. And as we compare our own
meager work to his, we often find ourselves thinking that no matter what
the topic is, Fishman has already taken care of it. He has already written
about it, presaging later developments, laying out the groundwork. We
find ourselves stumbling to make our own contributions fit, and make
sense. It is this ‘Olympian overview’ that Fishman provides that makes
everything else seem inconsequential - we can only provide examples from
other contexts that corroborate what he has written, or at best add a detail
here and there that extends his ideas into an area that was previously
ignored or forgotten.
But there is another aspect of his work that makes it different from work
in other disciplines or fields, and that is his tremendous humanity, his
caring about languages and peoples, and the careful, avuncular mentoring
he has extended to all who work in this paradigm. The atmosphere is one
that encourages and fosters exploration and innovation, rather than the
kind of adversarial infighting one finds in other fields and disciplines. We
are grateful that we work in an area that is exemplified by this magnani-
mous spirit, and can encourage students to continue to read his work and
learn from it.
Notes
1. In 1991, on the occasion of Joshua A. Fishman’s 65th birthday, four volumes were
published in his honor. John Benjamins published three Focusschrift in Honor of
Joshua A. Fishman on three different sociolinguistic topics: Bilingual Education
(Ofelia Garcia, ed.), Language and Ethnicity (JR. Dow, ed.) and Language Planning
(David F, Marshall, ed.). In addition, Mouton de Gruyter published The influence
of Language on Culture and Thought: Essays in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman’s Sixty-
Fifth Birthday (Robert L. Cooper and Bernard Spolsky, eds).
2. The bibliographic inventory compiled by Gella Schweid Fishman and included
in Cooper and Spolsky (1991) contained a total of 718 items. Today, the
bibliographic inventory contains a listing of more than 1200 entries.
3. This article, co-authored with Esther Lowy, Michael Gertner, Itzek Gottesman
and William Milén originally appeared in 1983 in the Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development, 4: 237-54, It was reprinted in Fishman 1989, pages
530-549,
4, Fishman’s work is widely cited in the literature. A search of Google Scholar, in
summer 2005, yielded 181 references. Appendix 3 lists the titles and numbers of
those references attested by Google Scholar where there were two or more
citations,
5. Because this volume includes (in Part 3) an exhaustive bibliography of Joshua A.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 53
Fishman’s work, in the references section at the end of this chapter we include
only the works from which we quote directly.
6. Joshua A. Fishman received his PhD in Social Psychology from Columbia
University in 1953.
7. Garcia (1991) includes a more extensive biography of Joshua A. Fishman that
readers might find helpful. Readers are also referred to Fishman, 1990.
8 For more on the role of this seminar, see Fishman (1997a) in Paulston and Tucker
(eds).
9. The researchers on Auslandsdeutsche were primarily German scholars concerned
with what had happened to the German language during emigration, ice. im
Ausland. The most important pioneer in this field was Heinz Kloss (Kloss, 1940).
10 It should be noted that this usage differs from Kloss (1929), who first proposed it,
as well as later versions of it (e.g. Kloss, 1967). The term Einbau, however, is
Fishman’s own.
11 Fishman’s articles on bilingual education include: Bilingual education in
sociolinguistic perspective (1970); Bilingual and bidialectal education: An
attempt at a joint model for policy description (1972); Bilingual education in
sociological perspective (1972); Bilingual education: What and why? (1973,
reprinted 1976, 1978, 1979); The sociology of bilingual education (1974, reprinted
1976, 1977, 1989); Bilingual education and the future of language teaching and
language learning (1975; reprinted 1976); Bilingual education: Hope for Europe’s
migrants (1976); The international sociology of bilingual secondary education
(1976); Bilingual education: A perspective (1977); Standard vs. dialect in
bilingual education (1977, reprinted 1979); The Bilingual Education Act: High
time for a change (1977); Bilingual education: Ethnic perspectives (1971
model for bilingual and bidialectal education (1977); Bilingual education and the
future of language teaching and language learning (1978); Philosophies of
bilingual education in societal perspective (1979, reprinted 1989); The significance
of the ethnic community mother tongue school (1979, reprinted 1985); Ethnic
community mother tongue schools in the USA (1980, reprinted 1981, 1989);
Minority language maintenance and the ethnic mother tongue school (1980);
Bilingual education, language planning and English (1980); Bilingual education
in the United States under ethnic community auspices (1980); Bilingual
education (1982); Mother tongues as media of instruction in the United States
(1982); The Americanness of the ethnic community school (1983); The use of
minority mother tongues in the education of children (1983, reprinted 1989);
Non-English language ethnic community schools in the USA (1985, reprinted
1989)
12 This article was reprinted in 1972 in Bernard Spolsky’s The Language Education of
Minority Children.54 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Appendix 1: Joshua A. Fishman’s Contributions to the
Sociology of Language (CSL) Book Series
The following is a list of works edited by joshua A. Fishman for the Sociology of
Language (CSL) series. Titles are listed under year of publication and in alphabetical
order by author/editor. This list was compiled with the assistance of Rebecca
Walters, Mouton de Gruyter and Zeena Zakharia, Teachers College, Columbia
University.
1972. Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Advances in the Sociology of Language: Selected Studies and
Applications (Vol. 2).
Lewis, E.G, Multilingualism in the Soviet Union: Aspects of Language Policy and
its Implementation.
1973. Fellman, J. The Revival of Classical Tongue: EliezerBen Yehuda and the Modern
Hebrew Language.
1975 Dillard, J.L. (ed.) Perspectives on Black English.
1976 Alisjahbana, §.T. Language Planning for Modernization: The Case of Indonesian
and Malaysian.
Byron, J. Selection among Alternates in Language Standardization: The Case of
Albanian,
Dillard, J.L. Black Names.
1977. de Francis, J. Colonialism and Language Policy in Viet Nam.
Grayshon, M.C. Towards a Social Grammar of Language.
Greenbaum, 8. Acceptability in Language
Luelsdorff, P.A. (ed.) Soviet Contributions to the Sociology of Language.
Rubin, J., Jernudd, B.H., DasGupta, J., Fishman, J.A. and Ferguson, C.A. (eds)
Language Planning Processes
Uribe-Villegas, O. Issues in Sociolinguistics.
1978 Gordon, D.C. The French Language and National Identity (1930-1975).
Jessel, L. The Ethnic Process: An Evolutionary Concept of Languages and Peoples
1979 Billigmeier, R.H. A Crisis in Swiss Pluralism. The Romansh and Their Relations
with the German- and Italian-Swiss in the Perspective of a Millennium.
Saulson, S.B. Institutionalized Planning: Documents and Analysis of Revival of
Hebrew.
Waurm,S.A. (ed.) New Guinea and Neighboring Areas: A Sociolinguistic Laboratory.
1980 Dillard, J.L. (ed.) Perspectives on American English.
Khleif, B.B. Language, Ethnicity, and Education in Wales.
1981 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Never Say Die! A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and
Letters.
Key, MR. The Relationship of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication. Second
printing.
1982 Cobarrubias, J. and Fishman, J.A. (eds) Progress in Language Planning. Interna-
tional Perspectives.
Forster, P.G. The Esperanto Movement.
1983. Veltman, C. Language Shift in the United States.
1985. Dillard, J.L. Toward a Social History of American EnglishFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 55
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
Fishman, J.A., Gertner, M.H., Lowy, E.G. and Milan, W.G. The Rise and Fall of
the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity.
Kreindler, LT. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Soviet National Languages
Their Past, Present and Future.
Mehrotra, RR. Sociolinguistics in Hindi Contexts.
Parkinson, D.B. Constructing the Social Context of Communication: Terms of
‘Address in Egyptian Arabic.
Wolfson, N. and Manes, J. Language of Inequality.
Evans, A.D. and Falk, W.W. Learning to be Deaf.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Fergusontian Impact. In Honor of Charles A. Ferguson on
the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Vol. 1: From Phonology t» Society; Vol. 2:
Sociolinguistics and the Sociology of Language)
Haarmann, H. Language in Ethmicity: A View of Basic Ecological Relations.
Preisler, B. Linguistic Sex Roles in Conversation: Social Variation in the Expression
of Tentativeness in English.
Haugen, E. Blessings of Babel: Bilingualism and Language Planning. Problems and
Pleasures.
Braun, F. Terms of Address: Problems of Patterns and Usage in Various Languages
and Cultures.
Flaitz, J. The Ideology of English: French Perceptions of English as a World
Language.
Harman, L.D. The Modern Stranger. On Language and Membership.
Heller, M. (ed.) Codeswitching: Anthropeiogical and Sociolinguistic Perspectives.
Coleman, H. (ed.) Working with Language: A Multidisciplinary Consideration of
Language Use in Work Contexts.
Garcia, O. and Otheguy, R. (eds) English Across Cultures. Cultures Across
English. A Reader in Cross-Cultural Communication.
Haarman, H. Symbolic Values of Foreign Language Use. From the Japanese Case to
4a General Sociolinguistic Perspective.
Jernudd, BH. and Shapiro, MJ. (eds) The Politics of Language Purism.
Key, MR. and Hoenigswald, H.M. (eds) General and Amerindian Ethno-
linguistics. In Remembrance of Stanley Newman.
Adams, K.L. and Brink, D.T. Perspectives on Official English. The Campaign for
English as the Official Language of the USA.
Janicki, K. Toward Non-Essentialist Sociolinguistics.
Clyne, M. (ed.) Pluricentric Languages. Differing Norms in Different Nations.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) A Language Policy for the European Community. Prospects and
Quandaries.
Fierman, W. Language Planning and National Development: The Uzbek Experience.
Haarmann, H. Basic Aspects of Language in Human Relations. Toward a General
Theoretical Framework.
McGroarty, M.E. and Faltis, CJ. (eds) Languages in School and Society: Policy
and Pedagogy.
Watts, RJ. Power in Family Discourse.
Brenzinger, M. (ed.) (1992) Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations
with Special Reference to East Africa.1993
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Earliest Stage of Language Planning. ‘The First Congress!
Phenomenon.
Harlig, J. and Pléh, C. (ed.) When East Met West: Sociolinguistics in the Former
Socialist Bloc.
Piitz, M. (ed.) Discrimination Through Language in Africa? Perspectives on the
Namibian Experience.
Fishman, J.A., Conrad, A.W. and Rubal-Lopez, A. (eds) Post-Imperial English.
Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940-1990.
Hellinger, M. and Ammon, U. Contrastive Sociolinguistics.
Dalls, KK. Language Loss and the Crisis of Cognition. Between Socio- and
Psycholinguistics.
Robinson, C.D. Language Use in Rural Development; An African Perspective.
Clyne, M. (ed.) Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning,
Fishman, J.A. In Praise of the Beloved Language: A Comparative View of Positive
Ethnolinguistic Consciousness.
Garcfa, O. and Fishman, J-A. (eds) The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New
York City.
Goldstein, T. Two Languages at Work: Bilingual Life on the Production Floor.
Hornberger, N.H. Indigenous Literacies in the Americas: Language Planning from
the Bottom up.
PuruShotam, N.S. Negotiating Language, Constructing Race: Disciplining Differ-
ence in Singapore.
Smith, M.G. Language and Power in the Creation of the USSR, 1917-1953.
Clyne, M.and Kipp, S. Pluricentric Languages in an Immigrant Context: Spanish,
Arabic and Chinese.
Kunihiro, T., Inoue, F. and Long, D. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Japanese Contexts/
Takesi Sibata.
Owens, J. Arabic as a Minority Language.
Ammon, U. (ed.) The Dominance of English as a Language of Science. Effects on
Other Languages and Language Communities
Wolf, H.G. English in Cameroon.
Garcia, O. and Fishman, J.A. (eds) The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New
York City (2nd edn),
Jones, MC. and Esch, E. (eds) Language Change: The Interplay of Internal,
External and Extra-Linguistic Factors.
Wei, L., Dewaele, J.M. and Housen, A. (eds) Opportunities and Challenges of
Bilingualism
Tuten, D.N. Koineization in Medieval Spanish.
Zhou, M. Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority
Languages 1949-2002.
Leitner, G. Australia’s Many Voices: Australian English: The National Language
(Vol. 1).
Leitner, G. Australia’s Many Voices. Ethnic Englishes, Indigenous and Migrant
Languages. Policy and Education (Vol. 2).
Hidalgo, M. (ed.) Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First
Century.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 57
Piitz, M., Fishman, J.A. and Neff-van Aertselaer, J. (eds) ‘Along the Routes to
Power’: Explorations of Empowerment Through Language.
Appendix 2: Joshua A. Fishman’s Contributions to the
International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL)
The following is a list of works published in the International Journal of the
Sociology of Language (I]SL) series, for which Joshua A. Fishman served as General
Editor. Titles are listed under year of publication and by issue number. This list was
compiled with the assistance of Rebecca Walters, Mouton de Gruyter and Zeena
Zakharia, Teachers College, Columbia University.
1974 1 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Sociology of Language in Israel.
Spolsky, B. and Bills, G.D. (eds) The American Southwest.
Cooper, RL. (ed.) Language Attitudes I.
1975 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue.
Rubin, J. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Southeast Asia,
2
3
4
5
6 Cooper, RL. (ed.) Language Attitudes Il.
Z
8
9
1976 7 Dillard, J.L. (ed.) Socio-Historical Factors in the Formation of the Creoles.
Berry, J. (ed.) Language and Education in the Third World.
Rona, j.P. and Wélck, W. (eds) The Social Dimension of Dialectology.
10 Nordberg, B. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Research in Sweden and Finland.
11 Rubin, J. (ed.) Language Planning in the United States
1977 12. Dressler W. and Wodak-Leodolter, R. (eds) Language Death.
13. Fishman, J.A. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue
14 Lewis, E.G. (ed.) Bilingual Education.
1978 15 Verdoodt, A. (ed.) Belgium.
18 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue
1979 19 Hancock, LF. (ed.) Romani Sociolinguistic:
20 Lamy, P. (ed.) Language Planning and Identity Planning.
21 Ammon, U. (ed.) Dialect and Standard in Highly Industrialized Societies.
22 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue.
1980 23 Sager, J.C. (ed.) Standardization of Nomenclature.
24 Fishman, J.A (ed.) Sociology of Yiddish,
25 Williamson, R.C. and van Eerde, J.A. (eds) Language Maintenance and
Language Shift
26 Fishman, |.A. (ed.) Varianceand Invariance in Language Form and Context.
1981 27 Walters, J. (ed.) The Sociolinguistics of Deference and Politeness.
28 Clyne, M.G. (ed.) Foreigner Talk.
29 Tabouret-Keller, A. (ed.) Regional Languages in France.
30. Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Sociology of Jewish Languages.
31 Currie, H.C. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Theory.
32. Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Uniguarded and Monitored Language Behavior.
1982 33. Kreindler, I. (ed.) The Changing Status of Russian in the Soviet Union.
34 Polomé, EC. (ed.) Rural and Urban Multilingualism.
35. Ellis, J. and Ure, J. (eds) Register Range and Change.58 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
36
37
38
40
41
43
45
46
47
49
50
52
53
54
55
56
57
59
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
Z
72
73
74
75
76
7
78
80
McKay, GR. (ed.) Australian Aborigines: Sociolinguistic Studies.
Harris, T-K. (ed.) Sociology of judezmo: The Language of the Eastern
Sephardim.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) From Conceptuatization and Performance to Planning and
Maintenance.
Leitner, G. (ed.) Language and Mass Media
Cooper, R.L. (ed.) Sacialinguistic Perspective on Israeli Hebrew.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Face-to-Face Interaction.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Decade Past, the Decade to Come (10th anniversary
issue).
Giles, H. (ed.) The Dynamics of Speech Accommodation.
Ros i Garcia, M. and Strubell i Trueta, M. (eds) Catalan Sociolinguistics.
Coleman, H. (ed.) Language and Work 1: Law, Industry, Education:
Fishman, ].A. (ed.) International Sociolinguistic Perspectives.
Magner, T.F. (ed.) Yugoslavia in Sociolinguistic Perspective.
Aguirre, Jr, A. (ed.) Language in the Chicano Speech Community.
Tabouret-Keller, A. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in France: Current Research in
Urban Settings.
Mehrotra, R.R. (ed.) Sociolinguistics Surveys in South, East and Southeast Asia,
Cooper, RL. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Perspective on Theoretical and Applied
Issues.
Preston, DR. (ed,) Sociolinguistic Taxonomics.
Jernudd, BH. Chinese Language Planning: Perspectives from China and
Abroad.
Jernudd, B.H. and Ibrahim, M.H. (eds) Aspects of Arabic Sociolinguistics.
Cooper, RL. (ed.) Language in Home, Community, Region and Nation.
Gorter, D. (ed.) The Sociology of Frisian
Apte, MLL. (ed.) Language and Humor.
Williams, G. (ed.) The Sociology of Welsh
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) The Sociology of Jewish Languages.
Dow, JR. (ed.) New Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Language
Shift 1
Dow, JR. (ed.) New Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Language
Shift 1,
6 Riagain, P. (ed.) Language Planning in Ireland.
Rickford, J.R. (ed.) Sociolinguistics and Pidgin-Creole Studies.
Pauwels, A. (ed.) The Future of Ethnic Languages in Australia.
Stalpers, J. and Coulmas, F. (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Dutch.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Language Planning and Attitudes
Mehrotra, RR. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in India
Zuanelli Sonino, E. (ed.) Italian Sociolinguistics: Trends and Issues.
Hornberger, N.H. (ed.) Bilingual Education and Language Planning in
Indigenous Latin America.
Janicki, K. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Poland.
Wherritt, I. and Garcia, O. (eds) US Spanish: The Language of Latinos.
Coulmas,F. (ed.) Current Issues in Language Planning and Language Education.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 59
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
81 Yuan, C. and Marshall, D.F. (eds) Sociolinguistics in the People’s Republic of
China.
82. Haarmann, H. and Hwang, J.R. (eds) Aspects of Korean Sociolinguistics.
83 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Zur Soziolinguistik des Deutschen / Varieties of German.
84 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Spanish in the USA: New Quandaries and Prospects.
85 Pollard, V. (ed.) Caribbean Languages: Lesser-known Varieties,
86 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Perspectives on Language Contact and Language Policy.
87 Ennaji, M. (ed.) Sociolinguistics of the Maghreb.
88. Sibayan, BP. and Gonzalez, A.B. (eds) Sociolinguistic Studies in the Philip-
pines,
89 Gomes de Matos, F. and Bortoni, S.M. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Brazil.
90 de Bot, K. and Fase, W. (eds) Migrant Languages in Western Europe.
91 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Yiddish: The Fifteenth Slavic Language.
92 Coulmas, F. (ed.) New Perspectives on Linguistic Etiquette
93. Taylor, A.R. (ed.) Language Obsolescence, Shift and Death in Several Native
American Communities.
94 Bull, T. and Swan, T. (eds) Language, Sex and Society.
95 Ammon, U. and Kleineidam, H. (eds) Language-Spread Policy I: Languages
of Former Colonial Powers.
96 Lastra, Y. (ed.) with the assistance of de la Mora, A. Sociolinguistics in
Mexico.
97 Hongkai,S. and Coulmas, F. (eds) News from China: Minority Languages in
Perspective.
98 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Attitudes and Accommodation in Multilingual Societies.
99 Siegel, J. (ed.) Koines and Koineization.
100/1 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Anniversary Issue: Preparing for the 21st Century.
102 Schnepel, EM. and Prudent, L-F. (eds) Creole Movements in the Franco-
phone Orbit.
103 Eastman, C.M. (ed.) (1993) Language in Power.
104 Verdoodt, A.F. and Sonntag, S.K. (eds) (1993) Sociology of Language in
Belgium (Revisited'.
105/6 Bourhis, RY, (ed.) French-English Language Issues in Canada.
107 Ammon, U. (ed.) Language Spread Policy Il: Languages of Former Colonial
Powers and Former Colonies.
108 Landry, R. and Allard, R. (eds) Ethnolinguistic Vitality.
109 Varro, G. (ed.) Language, the Subject, the Social Link: Essays offered to Andrée
Tabouret-Keller by the members of LADIDIS.
110 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Ethnolinguistic Pluralism and Its Discontents: A Cana-
dian Study, and Some General Observations
111 Kontra, M. and Pléh, C. (eds) Hungarian Sociolinguistics
112. Ennaji, M. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Morocco.
113 Devlin, B., Harris, S., Black, P. and Guruluwini Enemburus, I. (eds)
Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders: Sociolinguistic and Educa-
tional Perspectives.
114 Hidalgo, M. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Trends on the US-Mexican Border.
115 Jahr, EH. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Noreoay.
116 Coulmas, F. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue: Language Politics and Accommodation.
117 Elizainein, A. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.60
118
119
120
121
122
1997 123
124
125
126
WwW
128
1998 129
130
131
132
133
134
1999 135
136
137
138
139
140
2000 141
142
143,
144.
145
146
2001 147
148
149
150
151
152
2002 153
Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Dua, H.R. (ed.) Language Planning end Political Theory.
Verhoeven, L. (ed.) Vernacular Literacy in Non-Mainstream Communities.
Gustavsson, S. and Stary, Z. (eds) Minority Languages in Central Europe.
Grin, F. (ed.) Economic Approaches to Language and Language Planning.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) ‘Singles’ Issue: Concepts of Language in Asia and Other
Non-Western Societies.
Ennaji, M. (ed.) Berber Sociolinguistics.
Greenberg, M.L. (ed.) The Sociolinguistics of Slovene.
Abdulaziz, MH. (ed.) Sociolinguistic Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Alatis, |E,, Straehle, C.A. and Ronkin, M. (eds) Aspects of Sociolinguistics
in Greece.
Hamel, RE. (ed.) Linguistic Human Rights in a Sociolinguistic Perspective.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Issues in Language Contact and Social Power Relations,
Ide,S. and Hill, B. (eds) Women’s Languages in Various Parts of the World
Omar, AH. (ed.) Linguistic Issues in Southeast Asia
Topolinjska, A. (ed.) The Sociolingistic Situation of the Macedonian Language.
McCarty, T.L. and Zepeda, O. (eds) Indigenous Language Use and Change
in the Americas.
Varro, G. and Boyd, S. (eds) Americans in Europe: A Sociolinguistic Perspec-
tive. Probes in Northern and Western Europe.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Language Choice Issues.
Videnov, M. and Angelov, A. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Bulgaria
McCormick, K. and Mesthrie, R. (eds) Post-Apartheid South Africa
Landau, JM. (ed.) Language and Politics: Theory and Cases.
Isaacs, M. and Glinert, L. (eds) Pious Voices: Languages Among Ultra-
Orthodox Jews.
Hennoste, T, (ed.) Estonian Sociolinguistics.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Linguistic Symbolism, Political and Individual
Bamgbose, A. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in West Africa.
Ramirez Gonzalez, C.M. and Torres, R. (eds) Language Spread Policy Ill:
Languages of Former Colonial Powers and Former Colonies: The Case of Puerto
Rico.
Omoniyi, T. (ed.) Islands and Identity in Sociolinguistics: Hong Kong, Singa-
pore and Taiwan.
Kamwangamalu, N.M. (ed.) Language and Ethnicity in the New South
Africa.
Kallen, J-L., Hinskens, F, and Taeldeman, J. (eds) Dialect Convergence and
Divergence Across European Borders.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Problems of Multilingualism and Social Change in Asian
and African Contexts.
Filipovic, R. and Kalogjera, D. (eds) Sociolinguistics in Croatia.
Modarresi, Y. (ed.) Aspects of Sociolinguistics in Iran.
Hidalgo, M. (ed.) Between Koineization and Standardization: New World
Spanish Revisited.
Grivelet, S. (ed.) Diagraphia: Writing Systems and Society.
Radovanovic, M. and Major, R.A. (eds) Serbian Sociolinguistics.
Coulmas, F. (ed.) Language Contact Issues.
de Bot, K. and Stoessel, S. (eds) Language Change and Social NetworksFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present) 61
154 Ricento, T. and Wiley, T.G. (eds) Revisiting the Mother-Tongue Question in
Language Policy, Planning and Politics
155/6 Garcia, E.F. (ed.) Bilingualism and Schooling in the United States.
157 Fishman, J.A. (ed.) Focus on Diglossia.
158 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Linguistic Choices by Individuals, Organizations, and
Speech Communities.
2003 159 Kirstiansen, T. and Jorgensen, J.N. (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Danish.
160 Tabouret-Keller, A. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in France: Theoretical Trendsat the
Turn of the Century.
161 David, MK. (ed.) Language Maintenance or Language Shift: Focus on
Malaysia.
162 Nekvapil, J.and Cmejrkova,S. (eds) Language and Language Communities
in the Czech Republic.
163 Belnap, RK. (ed.) Arabic Sociolinguistics as Viewed by Western Arabists
164 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Language Expansion and Linguistic World.
2004 165 Konig, G. (ed.) Sociolinguistics in Turkey.
166 Bargiela-Chiappini, F. (ed.) Organizational Discourse.
167 King, K.A. and Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Quechua Sociolinguistics.
168 Goutsos, D. (ed.) The Sociolinguistics of Cyprus I (Studies from the Greek
Sphere).
169 Blanchet, P. and Schiffman, H. (eds) Revisiting the Sociolinguistics of
Occitan: A Presentation.
170 Coulmas, F. (ed.) Focus on Africa: Sociolinguistic Changes in a Changing
World.
2005 171 Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (eds) Trilingual Education in Europe.
172 Lotherington, H. and Benton, R. (eds) Pacific Sociolinguistics.
173 Bradley, D. (ed.) Language Policy and Language Endangerment in China.
174 Azurmendi, MJ. and Martinez de Luna, I. (eds) Presenting the Basque
Case.
175/6 Coulmas, F. and Heinrich, P. (eds) Changing Language Regimes in
Globalizing Environments: japan and Europe.62
Appendix 3:
Google Scholar Citations of Joshua A. Fishman’s Work
This table is correct as of August 2005. Only citations of more than one are
included. Books are rendered in italics, chapters and articles appear in regular font.
Where two entries appear to be the same, the first is usually the title of an article or
chapter, the second the title of a book (often the one in which the article or chapter
Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
appears).
Number of |Publication Title of publication |
citations | date_ _ J
123 1991 __Reversing language shift
96 1991 —_|Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of
“Assistance to Threatened Languages
75 1989 _ |Language & Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective
44 20OL [Can Threated Languages be Saved? Reversing Language Shift,
_ \Revisited: A 21st Century Perspective |
46 1967 Bilingualism with and without diglossia: Diglossia with and
without bilingualism _
37 1972 _ |The sociology of language
34 1978 _|Language Loyalty in the United States _|
24 1977 _|Language and Ethnicity
23, 1973 _|Language and Nationalism: Two Integrative Essays _|
2 1964 _ [Language maintenance and language shift as fields of inquiry _|
2 1970 __|Sociolinguisties: A Brief Introduction _ |
2 1996 |Post-Imperial English: Status change in former British and American
colonies (with A.W Conrad and A. Rubal-Lopez)
19 1972 |The Sociology of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science
| __| Approach to Language in Society
19 | 1971 __| Bilingualism in the Barrio 3
19 1991 | Bilingual Education: Focusschrift in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman
(edited by O. Garcia)
Ww 1990 |What is reversing langauge shift (RLS) and how can it succeed
7 1980 [Bilingualism and biculturalism as individual and societal
| [phenomena
7 1999 _|Hancdbook of Language and Etimic identity
17 | 1972 __|Language and nationalism |
16 1976 Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective J
7 1965 _|Who speaks what language to whom and when _
15, 1968 |Readings in the Sociology of Language ee
13 1968 Nationality-nationalism and nation-nationism
12 1968 __|Language problems of developing nations _
12 1970 [Language attitude studies: A brief survey of methodological
lapproachesFishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present)
at 1964 [Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and
[perpetuation of non-English mother tongues
1985 |The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language
land Ethnicity (with M.H. Gertner, E.G. Lowy, W.G. Milan)
1985 _|The rise and fall of the ethnic revival
9 1972 __|Language in Sociocultural Change
9 1974 __ |The study of language attitudes
9 1976 _| Advances in the sociology of language
9 | 1998 _ |The new linguistic order
9 1996 _|What do you lose when you lose your language
8 1972 [Domains and the relationship between micro-and macro-
sociolinguistcis
8 1999 _ [Sociolinguistics
8 1982 Whorfianism of the third kind: Ethnolinguistic diversity as a
worldwide societal asset
AG 1997 __ Maintaining languages, what works, what doesn’t
z 1976 Advances in language plannin,
7 1977 _|The Spread of English: The Sociology of English as an Additional Language
a 1977 _‘The spread of English
a 1997 |The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City (with O. Garcia)
a 1970 _|Bilingual Education in sociolinguistic perspective
7 1994 On the limits of ethnolinguistic democracy _
ae 1983 __ Sociology of English as an additional language
6 1971 National languages and languages of wider communication in
the developing nations
6 1968 Sociolinguistics and the language problems of the developing
countries
6 1956 | An examination of the process and function of social
ae stereotyping ee
6 1997 In Praise of the Beloved Language: A Comparative View of Po:
Ethnolinguistic Consciousness
5 1985 _|Language maintenance and ethnicity
5 1996 _ Introduction: Some empirical and theoretical issues
5 1997 _ Linguistic human rights from a sociolinguistic perspective (with
____|RE. Hamel)
1973 Language modernization and planning in comparison with
a other types of national modernization
5 1977 Bilingual education: Current perspectives. The social science
jk perspective
5 1994 Critiques of language planning: A minority languages
penpete
5 1994 _|English onl
5 1978 _ [Advances in the Study of Societal Multilinguatison64
Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Pears eee Title of publication
4 1983 |Progress in Language Planning: International perspectives
4 1968 Some contrasts between linguistically homogeneous and
linguistically heterogeneous polities
4 1968 _|A sociology of bilingual education
4 1996 _|Summary and interpretation: Post-imperial English 1940-1990
1974 | Language planning and language planning research: The state
of the art -
1979 _ | Bilingual education, language planning and English
1981 _|Societal bilingualism: Stable and transitional =
1980 Minority language maintenance and the ethnic mother tongue
a ‘school
4 2001 __|300-plus years of heritage language education in the United States
3 1974 | Yiddish in Israel: A case-study of efforts to revise a monocentric
language policy (with D-E. Fishman) :
3 2001 [From theory to practice (and vice versa): Review,
reconsideration and reiteration
1968 _|Sociolinguistic perspectives on the study of bilingualism
1987 | Language spread and language policy for endangered
languages :
3 1997 _|in praise of the beloved language
3 1993 |The Earliest Stage of Language Planning: The ‘First Congress’
Phenomenon
3 “1991 |Yiddish: Turning to Life
3 1993,__[thnolinguistic democracy: Varieties, degrees and limits
3 1988 |Ethnocultural issues in the creation, substitution and revision of
writing systems = a
2 1985 _ [Language, ethnicity and racism :
2 2001 |Digraphia maintenance and loss among Eastern European Jews:
Intertextual and interlingual print
2 1989 [Bilingual education and language planning in indigenous Latin
a ____ America :
2 1985 [Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages “
2 1971 __|Sociolinguistique = =
| 2 1980 Social Theory and ethnography: Language and ethnicity in
I a Eastern Europe
2 1977 __ | Advances in the Creation and Revision of Writing Systems
2 1985 | Ethnicity in Action: The Community Resources of Etimic Languages
int the United States = 4
a 1982__ |Sociolinguistic Foundations of Bilingual Education
2 1991 |Language and Ethnicity: Focusschrft in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman
lon the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (edited by J.R. Dow)Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present)
Reference:
Joshua A. Fishman works cited
We include here (in date order) only those works — often a collection of work —
from which we quote verbatim. For a more complete list of Fishman’s works
referred to in this chapter, please consult the bibliographical inventory compiled by
Gella Schweid Fishman, which forms Part 3 of this volume.
Fishman, J.A. and Passanella, A. (1960) College admission-selection studies. Review
of Educational Research 30, 298-310.
Fishman, J.A. (1964) Language maintenance and language shift asa field of inquiry.
Linguistics 9, 32-70.
Fishman, J.A. (1965) Who speaks what language to whom and when? La
Linguistique 2, 67-88.
Fishman, J.A. (1966) Language Loyalty in the United States. The Maintenance and
Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by American Ethnic and Religious
Groups. The Hague: Mouton.
Fishman, J.A. (1967) The description of societal bilingualism. In L.G. Kelly (ed.) The
Description and Measurement of Bilingualism (pp. 275-284). Toronto: Toronto
University Press.
Fishman, J.A. ed.) (1968) Readings in the Sociology of Language. The Hague: Mouton.
Fishman, J.A., Cooper, R.L., Ma, R. ef al. (1971) Bilingualism in the Barrio: Language
Science Monographs 7. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Fishman, J.A. (1972a) Language in Sociocultural Change. Essays by Joshua A. Fishman.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Fishman, J.A. (1972b) Language and Nationalism. Two Integrative Essays. Rowley, MA:
Newbury House.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) (1972c) Advances in the Sociology of Language Il. The Hague:
Mouton.
Fishman, J.A. and Lovas, J. (1972d) Bilingual education in sociolinguistic perspective.
In B. Spolsky (ed.) The Language Education of Minority Children (pp. 83-93).
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Fishman, J.A. (1973) Language modernization and planning in comparison with
other types of national modernization and planning. Language in Society 2, 23-44.
Cooper, R.L. and Fishman, J.A. 1974. The study of language attitudes. International
Journal of the Sociology of Language 3: 5-20.
Fishman, J.A. (1976) Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective.
Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Fishman, J.A. (1977) Bilingual Education: Current Perspectives. Social Science. Arlington,
VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Fishman, J.A., Cooper, RL. and Conrad, A. (1977) The Spread of English: The Sociology
of Language as an Additional Language. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Fishman, J.A. (1978) A gathering of vultures, the ‘legion of decency’ and bilingual
education in the USA. NABE Journal 21, 13-16.
Fishman, }.A. (1980) Ethnic community mother tongue schools in the USA:
Dynamics and distributions. International Migration Review 14, 235-247.
Fishman, J.A. (1982) Whorfianism of the third kind: Ethnolinguistic diversity as a
worldwide asset. Language in Society 11: 1-14.
Fishman, J.A. (1983) The rise and fall of the ‘ethnic revival’ in the USA. Journal of
Intercultural Studies 4 (3), 5-46,66 Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change
Fishman, J.A.,Gertner, M.H., Lowy, E.G. and Milan, W.G. (1985) The Rise and Fall of
the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Fishman, J.A. (1985) The societal basis of the intergenerational continuity of
additional languages. In K.R. Jankowsky (ed.) Scientific and Humanistic Dimensions
of Language. Festchrift for Robert Lado (pp. 551-558). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fishman, J.A. (1987) Ideology, Society and Language: The Odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum.
Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.
Fishman, J.A. (1989) Language and Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Fishman, J.A. (1990) My life through my work: My work through my life
(autobiography). In K. Koerner (ed.) First Person Singular (Vol. 2; pp. 105-124),
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fishman, J.A. (1991a) Putting the ‘socio’ back into the sociolinguistic enterprise. The
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 92, 127-138.
Fishman, J.A. (1991b) Reversing Language Shift: Theory and Practice of Assistance to
Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Fishman, J.A. (1991c) Yiddish: Turning to Life: Sociolinguistic Studies and Interpretations.
‘Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fishman, J.A. (1994) Critiques of language planning: A minority languages
perspective. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 15 (2 and 3),91-
99.
Fishman, J.A. (1996a) In Praise of the Beloved Language: A Comparative View of Positive
Ethnolinguistic Consciousness. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Fishman, J.A., Conrad, A.W. and Rubal-Lépez, A. (eds) (1996) Post-Imperial English
Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940-1990. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Fishman, J.A. (1997a) Bloomington, summer of 1964: The birth of American
sociolinguistics. In C.B. Paulston and G.R. Tucker (eds) The Early Days of
Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections (pp. 87-95). Dallas, TX: Summer
Institute of Linguistics Publications.
Fishman, J.A. (1997b) Language and ethnicity: The view from within. in E Coulmas
(ed..) The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (pp. 327-343). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Fishman, J.A. (1997) Reflections about (or prompted by) International Journal of the
Sociology of Language (I/SL). InC.B, Paulston and G.R. Tucker (eds) The Early Days
of Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections (pp. 237-241). Dallas, TX: Summer
institute of Linguistics Publications.
Fishman, J.A. (ed.) (1999) Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Fishman, J.A. (2000) The status agenda in corpus planning. In R.D. Lambert and E
Shohamy (eds) Language Policy and Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of A. Ronald Walton
(pp. 43-51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fishman, J.A. (ed) (2001) Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Fishman, J.A.(2002) Introduction. MOST Journal ont Multicultural Societies 4 (2),i-x
Other works cited
Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Anzaldiia, G. (1997) Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt
Lute Books.Fishmanian Sociolinguistics (1949 to the Present). 67
Baetens-Beardsmore, H. (1999) La consolidation des expériences en éducation
plurilingue. In D. Marsh and B. Marland (eds) CLIL Initiatives for the Millenia
Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. (M. Holquist, ed., M.
Holquist and C. Emerson, trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Brutt-Griffler, J (2004) World English: A Study of its Development. Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Calvet, LJ. (1999) Pour une écologie des langues du morde. Paris: Plon.
Canagarajah, S. (ed.) (2005) Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2002) Online document: http: /
/www.coe.int/T/E/Cultural_Co-operation/ education /Languages/Language_
Policy /Common_Framework_of_Reference/
Coste, D. (2001) La notion de compétence plurilingue. In Actes du Séminaire
U'Enseignement des Langues Vivantes, Perspectives. Paris: Ministére de la Jeunesse de
VEducation et de la Recherche, DES. On WWW at hitp://www.eduscol.
education.fr
Coulmas, F. (2005) Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers’ Choices. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman.
Fasold, R. (1984) The Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Ferguson, C.A. (1959) Diglossia. Word 15 (2), 325-340.
Garcia, O. (ed.) (1991) Bilingual Education. Focusschrift in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman
on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Vol. 1). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company.
Garcia, O. (2006) Lost in transculturation: The case of bilingual education in New
York City. In M. Pitz, J.A. Fishman and J. Neff-van Aertselaer (eds) ‘Along the
Routes to Power’: Explorations of the Empowerment through Language. Berlin/New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Gee, JP. (1996) Social Linguistics and Literacies. Ideology in Discourses. London: Taylor
and Francis.
Gibbons, P. (2002) Scaffolding Language: Scaffolding Learning. Teaching Second
Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Gutiérrez, K., Baquedano-L6pez, P. and Tejada, C. (1999) Rethinking diversity:
Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture and
Activity 6 (4), 286-303.
Haugen, E. 1996. Language Planning and Language Conflict. The Case of Modern
Norwegian, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pri
Hymes, D. (1972) Foreword. In J.A. Fishman, The Sociology of Language. An
intortiscpyinary Socal Science Approach to Language in Society (pp. v-viil). Rowley,
MA: Newbury House
Irvine, J. and Gal, S. (2000) Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In P.
Kroskrity (ed.) Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities and Identities (pp. 35-84).
Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.
Jenkins, R. (1997) Rethinking Ethnicity. London: Sage.
Jewett, C. and Kress, G. (2003) Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang.